James O’Keefe Scores Major First Amendment Victory In Oregon

Influential investigative reporter James O’Keefe, who now heads the O’Keefe Media Group (OMG), announced an impressive victory won Monday in an Oregon court.

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled on the eve of Independence Day that the state law banning recording individuals who do not explicitly consent violated First Amendment rights. This is overwhelmingly good news for the journalist famous for undercover investigations. 

O’Keefe founded and spent several years guiding Project Veritas before being ousted earlier this year in an apparently political move. He quickly rebounded with his new OMG venture. 

He and Project Veritas filed the suit in Portland in 2020.

The Ninth Circuit declared the law “violates the First Amendment right to free speech, invalid on its face.”

PVA v. Schmidt argued that Oregon’s statute violated the Constitution regarding the rights of journalists to undertake undercover investigations. The filing centered on the state law that required all parties being recorded to be “specifically informed.”

It banned the use of any device to “obtain or attempt to obtain the whole or any part of a conversation in which permission to record was not granted.

According to Circuit Judge Sandra S. Ikuta, the state did not have a compelling interest in protecting one individual’s conversational privacy in a public setting. She added that this meant protections from audio or visual recordings.

O’Keefe reported a previous ruling by Judge Michael W. Mosman was overturned.

Speaking to the Post Millennial, O’Keefe recounted the drastic conditions under which the lawsuit was filed three years ago. The investigative reporter often finds dirt on the powerful of either political stripe, and this particularly infuriates the left.

Radicals rarely appreciate having their own spoken words used against them.

O’Keefe recalled, “I knew this law was unconstitutional when my masterful free speech attorneys Barr, Klein and I entered the Marc O. Hatfield courthouse in 2020 with heavy security under threat of violence. 

He noted that the Oregon law, while prohibiting unapproved recordings of conversations, made exceptions for those with special permission from the government.

This, O’Keefe said, “just leaves the government putting its thumb on the lens of newsgathering, deciding which news is easiest to get and skewing reporting.”