“Even the president has a First Amendment right to be obnoxious,” said Justin Dillon, a former federal prosecutor now in private practice. “I’m not saying we shouldn’t condemn remarks like this, but we should defend his right to say them,” the lawyer said. “That’s an important distinction that’s being lost in our increasingly speech-suspicious society.”The First Amendment bars the government — not private companies — from restricting free speech. Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the University of California at Berkeley’s law school, said the president can say what he wants about football players. During the 2016 election, Kaepernick called Trump “openly racist,’’ and Trump has suggested Kaepernick should find another country to live in.

Source: Washington Post September 24, 2017 18:39 UTC