Weston, Garrou & Mooney has a long history in high-stakes First Amendment litigation, beginning with landmark U.S. Supreme Court cases litigated by the firm’s founders. Today, we handle complex constitutional matters for individuals, universities, nonprofit organizations, and businesses seeking clear, disciplined advocacy in disputes involving speech, expression, and government regulation.
Campus Speech, Academic Freedom & Institutional Governance
A significant part of our current practice involves advising and defending faculty, students, and academic institutions in cases at the intersection of speech, governance, and higher education. These matters often involve:
- Compelled speech and pronoun-use policies
- Faculty discipline and academic-freedom disputes
- Student speech and student-organization issues
- Institutional policies that restrict or chill expression
- Investigations and disciplinary proceedings involving expressive conduct
- Administrative or board-level misalignment with constitutional obligations
Our approach combines constitutional doctrine with a practical understanding of university governance, accreditation pressures, and internal processes.
Government Regulation of Expression & Expressive Conduct
We represent clients in challenges involving government restrictions on expressive activity, whether through permitting, zoning, licensing, public-forum access, or regulatory structures. This includes:
- Challenges to ordinances regulating expressive conduct
- Permit denials or delays affecting speech or assembly
- Overbreadth, vagueness, and prior restraint disputes
- Content-based or viewpoint-discriminatory regulations
- Civil enforcement actions directed at constitutionally protected expression
This category encompasses the firm’s longstanding work in expressive-conduct cases, including historically significant litigation involving regulated forms of adult expression. Our experience in this area gives us a deep understanding of how governments structure, and sometimes overreach, with regulatory schemes affecting constitutionally protected speech.
Defamation, Public Employees & Government Accountability
We advise on matters where speech intersects with government employment, media exposure, or public accountability:
- Public-employee speech rights
- Defamation and reputational disputes
- Open-records issues
- Speech-related disciplinary actions
- Retaliation for protected speech
We focus on early risk assessment and strategic positioning, both in and outside litigation.