As part of the agreement he reached to settle the matter, the plaintiff in the Cato suit had to accept a gag order that prevents him from discussing or criticizing the case.
Cato and the Institute for Justice are thus not revealing the man's identity because doing so would also reveal that he disagrees with, and is critical of, his settlement with the SEC. If he violates the gag order, SEC prosecutors could try to vacate the settlement and punish him more harshly.
If each of these settlements includes a similar gag order, that means almost no one targeted by the SEC can publicly discuss or evaluate the merits of the case against them.
Jaimie Cavanaugh, an Institute for Justice attorney working on the case, tells Reason that these SEC actions start with the agency threatening their targets with massive prosecutions and then settling for fines and allowing the person to forego an admission of wrongdoing.
It's not just the SEC. Other agencies like the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and Commodity Futures Trading Commission write similar gag policies into their settlements.
The lawsuit from the Institute for Justice, filed in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia, seeks to have this gag order declared an unconstitutional violation of the Cato Institute's First Amendment right to publish this man's book.
They're asking for an injunction to stop the SEC from enforcing these gag orders.
http://reason.com/blog/2019/01/09/the-feds-use-gag-orders-to-censor-critiq
Cato and the Institute for Justice are thus not revealing the man's identity because doing so would also reveal that he disagrees with, and is critical of, his settlement with the SEC. If he violates the gag order, SEC prosecutors could try to vacate the settlement and punish him more harshly.
If each of these settlements includes a similar gag order, that means almost no one targeted by the SEC can publicly discuss or evaluate the merits of the case against them.
Jaimie Cavanaugh, an Institute for Justice attorney working on the case, tells Reason that these SEC actions start with the agency threatening their targets with massive prosecutions and then settling for fines and allowing the person to forego an admission of wrongdoing.
It's not just the SEC. Other agencies like the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and Commodity Futures Trading Commission write similar gag policies into their settlements.
The lawsuit from the Institute for Justice, filed in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia, seeks to have this gag order declared an unconstitutional violation of the Cato Institute's First Amendment right to publish this man's book.
They're asking for an injunction to stop the SEC from enforcing these gag orders.
http://reason.com/blog/2019/01/09/the-feds-use-gag-orders-to-censor-critiq
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