News

Amanda Martin, a veteran communications attorney with extensive experience in media law, joined Duke Law School in July as senior lecturing fellow and supervising attorney in the First Amendment Clinic.

A founding partner of Stevens Martin Vaughn & Tadych of Raleigh, which has represented local, state, and national media outlets including The New York Times and The Washington Post, Martin has counseled clients on avoiding libel suits, responding to subpoenas, gaining access to public records and meetings, privacy laws, social media, and other speech-based issues.

Since 2003 Martin has served as general counsel to the North Carolina Press Association, which represents more than 150 newspapers, and advised countless reporters around the state through its legal hotline. She is co-author of the North Carolina section of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press Open Government Guide and co-editor and contributing author of the North Carolina Media Law Handbook.

“I am delighted that Amanda has joined the First Amendment Clinic full time,” said Clinic Director and Clinical Professor Sarah Hutt Ludington JD/MA ’92. “Amanda worked with us as an adjunct from July to December 2021 and proved to be an outstanding colleague and teacher. I believe that her addition will deepen our connection with the state media law community and raise the profile of the clinic.”

Raised in the “idyllic” setting of Gulf Breeze, Fla., on a peninsula in Pensacola Bay, Martin majored in journalism at the University of Florida and received her JD from the University of North Carolina School of Law. After beginning her career at an Atlanta firm, Martin joined the Raleigh firm of Everett Gaskins Hancock & Stevens until 2010, when she co-founded Stevens Martin Vaughn & Tadych with longtime law partner Hugh Stevens, a renowned First Amendment and media lawyer.

Martin has taught at UNC Law, the UNC Hussman School of Journalism and Media, and Campbell Law School. After serving as an adjunct instructor at the First Amendment Clinic last semester, she decided to make a career change.

Martin said she told longtime clients, “I’ve done this for 30 years. I’m hoping now to develop the next generation of ‘me.’ And I think that gave them a good feeling about it because they need the help.”

Though Martin is leaving private litigation, she will remain of counsel at the firm and will continue to represent the NC Press Association.

Martin relishes the opportunity to mentor students, as Stevens – whom she calls “the world’s greatest mentor” – did for her over many years. She called teaching last year’s clinic cohort “amazing.”

“People enroll in the First Amendment Clinic because it’s an interest of theirs and they are very eager to do it,” she said. “Last fall, I would have happily hired any of the students in the clinic in my law firm, because they are so excited and it’s such interesting work. I feel so lucky to be here and be a part of this.”

A strong supporter of clinical legal education since her own experience in law school, Martin said clinics provide not only high-quality legal representation to clients who could not otherwise afford it, but train students in critical soft skills of client service, including maintaining regular communication, that their first jobs may not provide.

“Being a lawyer is part counseling and part advocacy and representation,” Martin said. “Helping advance your client’s legal interests but also being present as they go through the process is an important part of being a lawyer, and that’s true for any area of law – whether you’re helping a client with a contract or a lawsuit. It’s very hard to get that experience in law school, so getting to help actual people is a golden opportunity for students and they love it.

“The clients are always so grateful to have the help and they are happy for it to be a learning experience for the students as well. It’s a dual mission, the teaching and the client interests, and they just dovetail beautifully, which is why I’m so excited to be here."

Providing critical support for newsrooms under pressure

Launched in fall 2018 by Professor H. Jefferson Powell and directed by Ludington since July 2020, the First Amendment Clinic provides legal representation to individuals and organizations on a wide range of matters pertaining to freedoms protected by the First Amendment. Among other actions, clinic members have filed amicus briefs with federal courts and the U.S. Supreme Court, drafted civil complaints on behalf of journalists blocked from the social media accounts of public officials, challenged the removal and banning of books from North Carolina high school libraries, and secured a settlement in a long-running federal defamation case against a South Carolina man sued for comments he made online criticizing a real estate developer.

The clinic also engages in policy advocacy. In spring 2021 students testified before North Carolina legislators in support of an anti-SLAPP bill. A SLAPP (Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation) is a frivolous libel lawsuit filed expressly to discourage individuals and organizations from exercising their First Amendment rights by forcing them to incur the cost of legal defense.

Such lawsuits can be devastating to newsroom budgets already stretched thin. Newspaper revenues, primarily from advertising, have dropped from $50 billion to $20 billion since 2005, according to the report “The State of Local News 2022” from Northwestern University’s Medill School. The number of journalists working in newsrooms has fallen by 60 percent, and a quarter of the nation’s newspapers have ceased publication altogether. The squeeze means fewer journalists monitoring local government and less resources to fight public officials who deny them lawful access to public records and meetings.

“If a newspaper gets sued for libel, they don’t have a choice. They have to defend themselves,” Martin said. “But as you’re looking at budgets, open government work is more susceptible to being cut. And I really think that over time government agencies have caught on that those budgets are being cut and they’re like, ‘Sue me. I’m not giving you this information. I don’t care what the law says.’

“That’s why the clinic is just brilliant. The government approach of, ‘We’re just going to wear you down’ won’t work because our clients don’t have to say, ‘I can’t afford this anymore.’ With the clinic behind them, they can insist on public officials abiding by the law, and public officials will realize that if they don’t, there can be consequences. There’s somebody right here in North Carolina who is going to sue them for it.”

With the decline of traditional media, the clinic is extending its outreach to non-profit news organizations that have sprung up to serve the 70 million U.S. residents who live in “news deserts” – counties with no local newspaper or only one. Carolina Public Press, Asheville Watchdog and the Border Belt Independent are several such outlets in North Carolina that are funded through grants and private donations.

“As we see it, the more you can help journalists, the more you help the state at large,” Martin said. “It is a virtuous cycle that the more information journalists can get and report, the better educated the public is to exercise our democratic franchise. We rely on the news media to get information out, whether it’s in the middle of a pandemic or the middle of an election cycle, and today that increasingly means these nontraditional structures to fill the gap from the newsrooms and the budgets that have been cut.”

The First Amendment Clinic was recently awarded a multi-year grant by the Legal Clinic Fund for Local News to increase its legal support to local newsrooms and journalists. The grant will enable the clinic to hire a fellow who will focus on public records and access matters for North Carolina journalists, Ludington said.

Along with libel defense for individuals and media work, the clinic also will be active in cases involving freedom of assembly. Last fall, students traveled to Florence, Ala., to speak with city officials on their use of parade permitting and noise ordinances to restrict peaceful protests and demonstrations, and in April the clinic joined in a lawsuit against the city and its chief of police.

And with the law evolving regarding expression on social media, Martin would like to create a resource to help educate people on what they can and cannot say online to avoid being sued for libel. That’s the focus of “Get 1A Smart: Having Your Say & Staying Out of Court,” a discussion she and clinic intern Benjamin Rossi ’23 will moderate on Sept. 21, when the UNC Center for Media Law & Policy celebrates its 13th annual First Amendment Day with a series of events across campus.

“Almost anything you want to say, I can tell you how you can say it in a safer way,” Martin said. “That’s the kind of public education that we need now when things are blowing up online. So I think that would be another area in which we could help, both representing those who have been sued for online comments, which the clinic has done, but also educating people. It’s great to win a libel suit. It’s better to not get sued at all.

“There’s plenty of work,” she added. “The harder question is how we get it all done.”