Ten Questions to a Media Lawyer
Marc Randazza is managing partner of Randazza Legal Group, based primarily in the firm’s Las Vegas office.
How did you get interested in journalism and the First Amendment?
I majored in journalism because as a kid my heroes were journalists and writers like Hemingway and Hunter S. Thompson. I went to UMass Amherst for journalism school, but flunked out three times because I was more interested in the drinking and drugs part of Hemingway and Thompson’s stories – and more majored in female anatomy than my actual studies. After UMass gave me one last chance to come back and get my act together, I took JS 312, Journalism and Law, with professor Karen List. And it was like the clouds parted and the ray of light hit me. I didn’t just do well in that course, but I went from saying “D is for diploma” to getting perfect grades.
While in school, it was the advent of “political correctness” on campus, and I found myself often at odds with an administration hellbent on silencing dissenting views. I had a Dead Kennedy’s poster on my door that said “Nazi Punks Fuck Off,” with a swastika and a red circle and slash over it – the universal sign for “I’m against this thing.” I was written up for an “anti-semitic display” – no matter that the message was supposed to be anti-nazi. I was a pain in the ass, and they found a way to mess with me.
As my seven years of undergraduate life progressed, I found that the more I spoke my mind, the more I figured out that the word “liberal” meant anti-free-speech and anti-humor, so the more I enjoyed crossing any line they drew. Between learning about the First Amendment rights of journalists and my own First Amendment issues there, I had some direction already.
What did your pre-law life as a journalist and mariner teach you?
As a journalist in D.C. and Italy, I practiced investigation and writing concisely. I learned how to observe and just let people spill. People like to talk their way into a story, just let them, and keep asking follow up questions about what is important to them. But, you keep your “three questions” in mind the whole time. If you’re writing an article, that gives you real insight into them. And in a deposition, you just let the deponent pan for gold for you.
But a funny thing happened along the way. When I was working sporadically as a freelancer, I picked up a short-term job working on an oil tanker, then another, and a freighter, and another tanker, and next thing I knew, I was spending most of my time at sea. Finally, I went off to Alaska where I worked as a fisherman, which was the last job I had before law school.
These were good environments to learn that hard work is great for your soul – sometimes, anyway. On a purse seiner, the newest crewmember has the hardest job – lead man (as in the metal). He stacks a quarter mile of lead-filled rope, with the net over his head, crushing scorching jellyfish, so you’re getting caustic burning liquid raining down on you as you’re working til you collapse. All day. All night. For weeks. No shower, resting in 30-40 minute cat naps. The sun never sets. The waves never stop. It’s a beating. But after a while, you get into a rhythm and you come to love it.
The next guy on the list stacks a quarter mile of corks, out from under the net. It is an easy job. When our cork man quit, we got a new crew member, and he immediately stood in the lead-man place. I shoved him out of the way saying “I’m the lead man on this boat.” Nobody had ever done that before, and the captain assured me that I could move up the ladder. I didn’t want to. I liked the hard part of the job. After a day of your skin burning and your muscles burning even hotter, you feel a state of connection to something that only working yourself to exhaustion can give you. You really did something that day.
That’s sorta like running a law firm. Sure, I have associates and clerks to do a lot of the grunt work, but I still love to get on the metaphorical deck of the boat and work the net myself.
What was your first real First Amendment case?
I represented an adult bookstore in Florida that the local government was messing with. I was doing condo association work at the time, which was awful – stuff like writing letters to condo dwellers about their dog being over the 25 lb weight limit. I was literally handling a stack of “fat dog cases.” When the adult bookstore came in, and a partner asked if any associates knew anything about First Amendment law, I dove on that.
What is the through-line connecting your adult-entertainment, anti-SLAPP, protest, anonymous-speech, and media cases?
2 Corinthians 3:17: “Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.” God asks us all to do something for him – and what he asked me to do was to bring that phrase to light as much as possible. Of all the things he could have asked of me, he asks me to do this super fun thing? How lucky am I?
When I defend a satanist’s free speech rights, I believe that I am doing what God asked me. When I help an anti-abortion protester, it’s the same thing. There is a principle here – and the freedom inside that principle is the mission he asked me to go on.
The First Amendment is a neutral principle. It doesn’t matter if it is someone protesting outside a courthouse, an online troll, someone publishing the most awful things possible, or someone publishing truth in the face of power. Those five freedoms that I swore I would spend my career protecting are not limited by who benefits from them. I look at my job as keeping the marketplace of ideas open. If I do that, that is where I find God.
You’ve represented some deeply unpopular clients. What do people most misunderstand about that work?
The First Amendment isn’t a popularity contest. If I only represented people I liked, I’d be a hack, not a First Amendment lawyer. The real test is defending the Nazi, the pornographer, the troll, or the conspiracy guy, the client whose speech makes your blood boil. That’s when the principle actually matters. Popular speech doesn’t need lawyers. And when you can defend the speech of someone you wish would remain silent forever, that’s when you’re on the deck of the boat, stacking that quarter mile of lead-filled rope, covered in crushed jellyfish.
But I have taken a lot of flak from even so-called “media lawyers” because “media law” and “First Amendment law” are not the same thing. A mentor of mine in the First Amendment lawyers’ association essentially cut ties with me because I defended Alex Jones and a Nazi, arguing “That’s going too far.” Ferris Bueller said “you can never go too far” and he was right. If you think you’re a First Amendment lawyer, but there is speech too dirty for you, then you’re not a First Amendment lawyer at all. You’re an activist for whatever it is you believe in, but you’re using the First Amendment as a tool to advance other interests. There’s nothing wrong with that, that’s what most people do – but don’t tell me you’re a “First Amendment lawyer.”
Do you consider yourself conservative, libertarian, or something else — and how do you fit into the media bar?
I don’t really fit in anywhere. I used to think I was liberal, until I went to law school and realized that most liberals are unprincipled authoritarians and I can’t stand what they think. I ran for student government in law school, as a joke. I put up flyers that ripped off a penile implant story from the newspaper, where a guy said “You could hit my penis with a sledgehammer and I wouldn’t even feel it.” The flyer had that story and said “Vote for Marco, 100% real, no insensitive dick.” A couple days before the election, some crybaby organization said they were “offensive” and tore them all down.
Then the dean had me come down to answer for myself. I thought, “You flunked out of college three times, and somehow find yourself at Georgetown law school – just go along to get along and grow up.” But what actually came out of my mouth was “Are you out of your fucking mind? This is political speech, and I’m the one who is getting written up?” The “womyns legal alliance” wasn’t very happy, but the dean did reluctantly side with me.
That’s when I realized I was in no way a “liberal,” but I didn’t like the conservatives much either. The Bush years were some of the darkest years in my life when it comes to how our government treated freedom of expression. I was horrified at them as they traded panic after 9/11 for our constitutional rights.
But as far as where I would find myself right now? I’d say more of a “nationalist right wing” type guy. I miss Ronald Reagan. I wish John McCain could have been president. I voted Fratelli D’Italia in the Italian elections, and love my prime minister there, Giorgia Meloni.
In the media bar, I certainly don’t feel like I fit in. There are a decent number that I am friendly with, but chatter sometimes gets back to me that a lot of them whine when I represent people they’re politically opposed to. I proudly represented the Gateway Pundit, when MLRC members found a loophole in the “don’t sue the media” rule to be on the plaintiffs’ side, to silence journalism they didn’t like. I am proud to have represented Alex Jones, the Satanists, radical Catholics, and anyone else who needs First Amendment representation. I don’t do it to make friends at banquets.
Is there a case you regret taking, or a line you will not cross?
I don’t regret taking anything on ideological grounds. And if you have a “line,” then you’re not a First Amendment lawyer. You might be a good guy, you might be a great lawyer, but you’re not a fucking First Amendment lawyer if you say you won’t take certain speech because it is “offensive.” Or because you are worried that you won’t be invited to certain parties if you take on people who are politically unpopular.
Regrets are stupid. God put me exactly where he wants me at every moment. So when cases go bad, or I get stiffed for a lot of money, make a judge pissed off – who cares! I am exactly where I am supposed to be, and every rock I stepped on to get here was put there by God to lead me to where he needs me. How can you have regrets when you have seen a wave larger than your oil tanker looming over you, or if you’ve seen the sun at midnight as you feel like you’re going to collapse, or if you’ve been told that your cancer would leave you debilitated forever, and you’re still here? Regret is not for cases. Regret is what you feel about not spending enough time with people you love, or for hurting someone you didn’t mean to.
What First Amendment issues worry you most right now?
The fact that we no longer seem to have a universal belief in our profound national commitment to wide open and robust debate. That our education system has skewed so far left that it indoctrinates students into hating the First Amendment, or believing that if the exception is “noble” enough, the principle should fall. That orthodoxy is more important than growth and discussion. The fact that there are so few actual “First Amendment Lawyers” left. When the Floyd Abrams Institute at Yale is promoting lawsuits against media because of political differences, we have had a real paradigm shift in what protection of the First Amendment really means.
We have a judiciary that no longer universally holds the same values – where, when you have a First Amendment case, the first question you ask is “who appointed the judge?” because that indicates the outcome more than any other data point.
The thing that really worries me the most is that we have had a generation, and counting, that has been lied to so effectively that they believe the First Amendment is not actually a good thing. And there are not many of us left who truly believe in it.
What does scuba diving give you that law does not?
I grew up in Gloucester, Massachusetts, and there is a memorial there to fishermen who died at sea. It quotes Psalm 107:23: “They that go down to the sea in ships…” My other “happy place” is Bonaire, a scuba divers’ paradise island. And there, there’s a huge mural that has the psalm’s next line: “These see the works of the Lord, and his wonders in the deep.”
I practice First Amendment law to serve God. I scuba dive to visit him. I get silence. Clarity. Tranquility. My heart rate drops to a slow drip. I start existing in three dimensions. Sometimes I dive and just close my eyes. Or I go at night and turn off my light and just hang there. I see the wonders in the deep.
Under water is really the only place I feel “home.” I get down there and I have this rush of “big feelings.” Sometimes it literally brings tears to my eyes because I am so comfortable. The endlessness of the ocean, and you’re connected to it, part of it, and you’re touching something that touches everything. You can’t get that at your desk, man.
What advice would you give to a young lawyer who wants to do serious speech work without following the usual path?
There is no “usual path.” If you truly want to do this job, you don’t even find your path – it finds you. Don’t be a free speech lawyer because you think you want to do it. It is a calling. Something will be your origin story. Something will be your first experience in which you feel your First Amendment rights being violated, and you will realize that you have to do this.
I’m always looking for new raw talent to hone into the next generation of First Amendment lawyers. But they are harder and harder to find, as law schools don’t teach students to care about the First Amendment. But a few always get through. If you have that desire to protect the First Amendment, don’t let anything get in your way. The First Amendment is not going to protect itself. If not you, who?