Statement by Sandy Nelson on Supreme Court's Refusal to hear case

[Michael Eisenscher <meisenscher@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

---------- Forwarded message ----------

Statement to the Media
by Sandy Nelson
October 10, 1997

My defense committee and I are angered but not surprised that the
U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear my case against The News Tribune
of Tacoma, Washington. This refusal leaves newspaper reporters in
Washington state without the same free-speech and political guarantees
as their readers and publishers.

I will keep speaking out against publishers' unconstitutional attacks on
reporters, and someday when a fair Supreme Court hears the issues, a
majority of justices will surely reject TNT's absurd assertion that the
civil liberties of an individual reporter could interfere with freedoms of
the owners of the presses. My political activism has never hin-dered the
publication of the paper or dissemination of its line, yet I am held up
as a great danger to journalistic ob-jectivity. This is ridiculous.

Nelson vs TNT, et al, was a cutting-edge battle to stop employer retaliation
against workers who used their First Amendment rights. From the beginning,
the case received solid labor backing from the Washington State Labor
Council, Newspaper Guild International, and dozens of unions, including
AFSCME, which represents 1.3 million US workers. And it received the
historic backing of the American Civil Liber-ties Union of Washington,
which in the past always defended the publishers' freedom of speech.
This time the ACLU pro-claimed that publisher rights could not smash
employee rights.

In 1990 I spent my off-duty hours working on an effort to preserve a Tacoma
law that protected lesbians and gays from discrimination in employment
and housing. When that law was lost, I participated in a citizen
initiative to create a state law for the same purpose. Today, I continue
to fight for the employment rights of lesbians and gays by supporting
Initiative 677.

The News Tribune demanded that I abstain from all political activity and
moved me from my education beat to the copy desk where I lost my byline and
reporting career. With help from the Newspaper Guild, I filed a suit before
the National Labor Relations Board that resulted in a final decision
that the NLRB is not responsible for protecting workers' constitutional
rights.

The ACLU filed the present suit in 1993. In 1995, Pierce County Superior
Court Judge Vicki Hogan ruled in favor of the TNT's Summary Judgment
petition. We then appealed the case to the Washington State Supreme Court
which found that state law protecting workers from employment harassment
due to their involvement in electoral issues does not apply to newspapers.
This week the US Supreme Court denied the ACLU`s appeal of that Washington
decision.

My lawyers, defense committee and I are very proud of what we accomplished
in the past seven years:

o  We persuaded the Washington State Supreme Court to uphold the state's
Fair Campaign Practices Act, which bars employ-ers from retaliating against
workers for their political ac-tivism. We will continue to inform Washington
workers about the Act and urge them to use it for political self-defense.

o  We took every opportunity to publicly expose media "objectivity" as a
myth and marketing tool. We will continue to denounce such hypocrisy and
join others who are opposing the US media monopoly.

o  And we built the foundation for the next reporter who steps up to
continue this good fight.

I want to thank my lawyers--James Lobsenz, William Bender and Paul Chuey;
the ACLU of Washington; National Lawyers Guild; Sandy Nelson Defense
Committee; Washington State La-bor Council and every individual union
that endorsed the case and donated money; the Freedom Socialist Party and
Radical Women, which continued their long history of fight-ing for the
right to be radical; Seattle Gay News and every organization and
individual journalist, queer, feminist, person of color, radical and
union member here and abroad who helped pursue this long, arduous battle.
We would never have accomplished so much without all of you.

For more information contact the Sandy Nelson Defense Committee, P.O. Box 5847,
Tacoma, WA 98415 USA, (253)756-9971, (253)759-3988 fax, <hnoble@xxxxxxxxxx>.
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