Looks Like a First Amendment Violation to Me

A judge in Center County, PA has ordered a newspaper to remove news articles from its archive due to the expungement of those records. This seems like a pretty straightforward constitutional violation to me. Eugene Volokh posted about this yesterday, and noted:

In addition to being substantively unconstitutional speech restrictions, the orders were also probably procedurally deficient, since it sounds like the newspapers were never given an opportunity to appear in court before the order was issued (and the judges didn’t find any extraordinary circumstances that justified a temporary restraint in the absence of notice to the newspapers). Thanks to Richard Lyon for the pointer.

Not much seems to get by the Volokh Conspirators. When Bitter was telling me this story on the way in I was excited that I might actually have something interesting to send their way, but already taken care of it seems. Capitol Ideas is covering it too.