By Jenny Montoya Tansey, Program Lead, Just Democracy, Skyline Foundation.
First Amendment protections and the values they represent are fundamental to our democracy, with expansive implications across society. Today, we face multiple threats to free expression, so Skyline has expanded on its longstanding investments in free speech. The breadth and complexity of this issue demands a multifaceted funding strategy, focused not just on the legal struggles but the larger cultural battle as well.
Congress shall make no law … abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
—United States Constitution
Protect Democracy’s Authoritarian Playbook captures the risks inherent in this moment: “Strong democracies have strong oppositions and an independent press that alerts the public when those in power are abusing their positions. Autocratic movements and regimes tend to weaken not only freedom of speech and of the press, but also the influence of public voices (often media or civil society) that could serve as vocal counterpoints to the autocratic faction. And while newsrooms are a favorite target, whistleblowers, civil society, activists, and religious leaders also regularly face attacks, jail time, and worse.”
Key investments are urgently needed to bolster a free press, and defend freedom of speech for everyday Americans as well as in our institutions of learning—libraries, colleges and universities. This post examines the strategy behind our free speech grantmaking at Skyline, including some new grantee partners we added in 2025. We hope these insights will be helpful to our fellow funders.
Freedom of the Press
Skyline’s free speech grantmaking prioritizes protecting journalists and news organizations. Long-term grantees like the Student Press Law Center (SPLC) and the ACLU address gaps in legal support and defend press freedom in state legislatures. SPLC, for example, advances laws that block student media censorship and protect advisers from retaliation for refusing to censor. There is also a growing need to counter efforts to erode existing protections, such as proposals to lower the threshold for public officials to bring libel suits.
Journalists’ need for legal help is urgent. According to a newer Skyline grantee partner, the Reporter’s Committee for Freedom of the Press (Reporter’s Committee), about half (54%) of U.S. journalists say their legal needs are unmet, either “frequently” (24.2%) or “occasionally” (29.5%).
Small newsrooms, in particular, may be ill-equipped to defend against legal threats, as one Skyline grantee partner, Mississippi Today, experienced when the state’s former governor sued the outlet and its executive director for defamation over comments related to its Pulitzer-winning story uncovering state officials’ misappropriation of welfare funds. The newsroom eventually prevailed in district court – with legal support from the Reporter’s Committee. But effectively defending the suit has been a distraction and a capacity drain on an intrepid organization already doing a lot with a little.
As Josh Stearns at Democracy Fund said, “No local newsroom is sustainable if they can’t afford to hire a lawyer. For too many journalists, one lawsuit could bankrupt them or their newsroom.”
The experiences of these newsrooms speak to the central importance of the work of three new Skyline grantees: Reporter’s Committee, the Legal Clinic Fund and Lawyers for Reporters. Reporter’s Committee provides direct representation, legal referrals, and training to protect the First Amendment rights of hundreds of journalists, including dedicated pro bono support on the ground in multiple states. Legal Clinic Fund supports First Amendment-focused law school clinics that offer pro bono assistance that includes access to legal information, pre-publication review, and First Amendment protections. Lawyers for Reporters functions as in-house counsel to smaller news organizations that would otherwise lack representation, providing a “full body scan” that helps newsrooms assess legal risk in a political environment where nonprofits, including newsrooms, are being threatened with loss of their tax status, as well as by public funding cuts and government investigations.
It’s also critical to focus resources on journalists who operate in spaces and contexts in the US where they have fewer legal rights and protections:
- The growing population of freelance and independent journalists face heightened risk, without a newsroom backing them as they begin to develop a story. Nearly half of them report frequently unmet legal needs, twice the overall rate. Skyline’s grant to Type Investigations helps freelance journalists and small newsrooms to produce investigative journalism, including through access to legal support.
- Skyline grantee partner Prison Journalism Project supports incarcerated writers and reporters, who are particularly vulnerable to reprisals by government officials (and who face many other barriers to communication that implicate the First Amendment.)
Heightened immigration action across the country has put non-citizen journalists, contributors, and sources in the crosshairs; some have been attacked by law enforcement, detained, and deported — chilling free speech and potentially in violation of the First and Fifth Amendments. Student Press Law Center and Lawyers for Reporters are both working to get news organizations guidance and legal support at the intersection of free speech and immigration enforcement.
Freedom of Speech
The First Amendment requires the highest level of scrutiny for a government’s content-specific regulation of speech. But this year has witnessed an unprecedented assault on First amendment rights. We have seen a string of high profile attacks on free speech, targeting law firms, revoking the visas of student protestors, demanding that colleges and universities limit protests, and leveling threats at the news media – among many other threats.
No right was deemed by the fathers of the Government more sacred than the right of speech.
It was in their eyes, as in the eyes of all thoughtful men, the great moral renovator of society and government.
—Frederick Douglass,
A Plea for Free Speech in Boston
Just as certain journalists experience more legal precarity and eroding freedom when it comes to free speech, so do certain everyday people—especially noncitizens. The federal government uses its authority over the border and over immigrants, to conduct surveillance of social media, to interrogate people about their political and religious views, and to undertake warrantless searches of laptops and cellphones. That surveillance functions as a form of soft censorship, with major consequences for the speech rights of a huge swath of our population.
To counter these threats, Skyline funds organizations defending speech rights of everyday people, including the ACLU and the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, which uses strategic litigation, research and public education to safeguard free expression in the shifting landscape of the digital age. We believe it is important to support champions of free speech across the political spectrum, as these rights are a fundamental value. In this spirit, we support the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), which rose to prominence defending the speech rights of conservative students and academics.
Free Speech in Schools and Libraries
Because schools, universities, and libraries are centers of access to information and the exchange of ideas in our society, they are flashpoints for debates about free speech. Our First Amendment and our free speech values should ensure that these spaces are open to all ideas and people—but that value is under fire today.
In the political arena, states are now banning the teaching of targeted academic frameworks like “discriminatory equity ideology.” Since 2021, 18 states have put in place so-called “divisive concepts laws” that prohibit teaching about certain concepts related to gender, race, and racism. Faculty across the country, even outside of those states, feel constrained in the concepts they can speak on and teach, according to surveys. Access to educational resources and information is also critical to learning and to our democracy. Since 2020, there has been a massive uptick in book banning, primarily targeting books containing themes of racism, LGBT+ identities, and sexual experiences.
The fight for free speech in schools– and in libraries – is ramping up at every level of the education world and spans ideology. To protect rights in the context of K-12 education, we support the work of our partner Pen America.
Free speech issues have a broad reach. The battle is multi-faceted and legal as well as cultural. We don’t have a choice: if we want to hold onto our First Amendment rights, we need to move on all these fronts at once, and it is urgent for philanthropy to step up.
Jenny Montoya, Program Lead, Just Democracy, Skyline Foundation
