WFMY News 2 features Elon Law expert on free speech

Associate Dean Enrique Armijo spoke with the Greensboro news station for a report on the scant legal protections available in North Carolina for those who are victims of cyberbullying.

WFMY News 2 spoke at length with an Elon Law scholar who specializes in free speech for a February 4 in-depth report on the challenges of legally holding people accountable for cyberbullying in North Carolina.

Journalist Maddie Gardner’s report, “Why cyberbullying is so hard to fight in North Carolina courts,” included insights from Associate Dean Enrique Armijo on a 2016 decision by the state’s Supreme Court striking down an existing cyberbullying law.”

Elon Law Associate Dean Enrique Armijo

“The way that the statute defined cyberbullying – it didn’t just say ‘harass,’ it also said language intended to ‘annoy’ and the court said that that language is too broad to kick in and have someone be prosecuted,” Armijo said.

Armijo’s scholarship has appeared in the Boston College Law Review, the Washington and Lee Law Review, the North Carolina Law Review, the peer-reviewed Communication Law and Policy and Political Science Quarterly, and other journals. An influential scholar often cited in news coverage of First Amendment issues, Armijo has also worked with regulators and practitioners on media reform throughout the world, including in Jordan, Rwanda and Myanmar.

His work has been cited by the Federal Communications Commission, the Federal Election Commission, and other agencies, and in testimony before the U.S. Senate Committee on Governmental Affairs. Armijo regularly comments on technology law issues for Bloomberg Law and serves as an Affiliated Fellow of the Yale Law School Information Society Project.