Professor Enrique Armijo spoke with program host Robin Young about the free speech considerations in a defamation lawsuit brought against the media mogul by parents of a Sandy Hook shooting victim.
An Elon Law faculty member who teaches and publishes legal scholarship on free speech was a featured guest for an August 3 segment of the NPR news program “Here & Now.”
Professor Enrique Armijo spoke with host Robin Young about the defamation lawsuit brought by the parents of a Sandy Hook victim who sued media mogul Alex Jones for his repeated claims that the 2012 school shooting in Connecticut was a hoax.
In the August 3 interview, Armijo said that while even falsehoods can be protected under the First Amendment, “the right to say false things is not absolute.”
A Texas jury would soon award the parents $4.5 million in compensatory damages and $45.2 million in punitive damages.
Armijo is a Fellow at the Institute for Data, Democracy & Politics at George Washington University and an Affiliate Fellow of the Yale Law School Information Society Project and the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill Center for Information, Technology, and Public Life. He teaches and researches in the areas of the First Amendment, constitutional law, torts, administrative law, media and internet law, and international freedom of expression.
His scholarship addresses the interaction between new technologies and free speech.