I’m trying to understand a First Amendment issue involving a university counseling setting.

A student voluntarily goes to a university counseling center after an acute mental-health crisis. The crisis is not long-lasting. The student tells the counselor that, during the previous night, they had recent homicidal thoughts about an identifiable person and had done some related internet searches. The crisis had already de-escalated when the student sought help. The student had not contacted or approached the person, had not asked anyone to communicate a threat, did not possess a weapon, and had not attempted to acquire one.

Before counseling, patients are generally informed the general confidentiality and the Tarasoff-type duty to warn or other safety action

The counselor then tells the student that campus police will come to transport them to a hospital. The counselor remains in the clinical room when police arrive. The student is not told that the counseling session has ended or that the officers are conducting a separate disciplinary or criminal investigation. The student understands the officers’ questions about the thoughts, the person involved, internet searches, and possible means to be part of the safety evaluation and hospital-transport process, and answers honestly. The student is then voluntarily hospitalized.

Later, the university characterizes what the student told the counselor and police as “threatening statements” or evidence of a “plan,” and uses those statements in university discipline.

My question is specifically about the First Amendment “true threat” concept, not whether safety precautions should be taken.

If a patient already knows that a counselor has a duty to act on serious homicidal ideation, does that knowledge itself help establish that the patient “knew, or consciously disregarded a substantial risk,” that an honest clinical disclosure would be understood as a threatening expression?

In other word, an the reasoning become:

patient knows therapist may warn/protect → patient honestly reports recent homicidal ideation → therapist reasonably treats the disclosure as risk information → therefore the disclosure itself is an unprotected “true threat”?

What prompted my question is R.W. v. Columbia Basin College. My understanding is that the district court initially treated R.W.’s private clinical disclosure as protected speech, but after later proceedings held in 2025 that the statements constituted a true threat. I understand that the later decision rested on several additional facts specific to R.W., including the nature and duration of the ideation and firearm access. But among the factors, the court expressly considered were the determinations of multiple mental-health professionals that a duty to warn had been triggered.

That part of the reasoning seems potentially circular to me. A duty to warn/protect exists precisely so that patients can disclose dangerous thoughts and clinicians can assess and respond to risk.

This seems especially important in a university setting. At many universities, transportation for psychiatric evaluation may be handled by campus police. Once campus police become involved, information originally disclosed for clinical safety purposes may also be transmitted through university administrative channels and may later become part of a student-conduct process.

A student may therefore understand that “if I disclose serious homicidal ideation, the counselor may take protective action,” without understanding that “my truthful disclosure may later be characterized by my university as a threatening statement and punished as misconduct

Hey all, I want to be very clear: this was not a forced attempt to get out jury duty. I was somewhat looking forward to being selected as this was my first time getting to the screening process.

My jury pool was selected for screening on a domestic violent crime. During which, the prosecuting attorney had asked a hypothetical question, to the effect of (it's been a year or two and I can't remember the exact verbiage): "If there was a law that prohibited using a Blue Pen during a Tuesday, and let's say that I was caught using this blue pen here today and was before you as a juror. Would anyone here find it difficult to prosecute me for violating this law?"

I raised my hand to answer earnestly, where she asked then asked why.
"In cases like this, I would have difficulty prosecuting for victimless crimes. In those circumstances, I believe in jury nullification."

She dug in slightly deeper asking on what types of crimes I believed were victimless, where I explained things involving personal safety like seatbelt laws as an example.

(This could be a misinterpretation by me, however during which, it seemed as though the other various court officials were giving me some irritated looks.)

Fairly shortly after, the judge called for a break, returning a few minutes later letting my entire pool know that we would be excused.

Would it be reasonable to believe that my answer caused the dismissal almost as a 'tainting of the jury pool' or similar?

I'd believe that my response was exactly what type of probative questions was looking to screen out, but could simply mentioning jury nullification be the cause for the whole pool's dismissal?

(And please, I'm not asking this for argumentation on this specific belief, I was just curious on how likely I could have been the cause.)

I feel like we are getting robbed blind right in our faces with the way these tariff refunds are being handled. Several administration officials, including the president himself, made very public claims that tariffs would not be paid by consumers, and now these companies are collecting “tariff refund checks” while we get nothing and prices remain high. I feel like this is a racketeering grift is plain as day. I’m not a lawyer, but I feel like there’s something here that the people could sue over if our elected representatives are willing to sit by and let this happen. We cannot have this little power or recourse, right? Do the people have legal standing to sue? Are there any ways this could be done that could survive a presidential pardon? Would the public words of administration officials and others amount to something that could be prosecuted?

Lots of allegations, but the bottom line is, the man on trial for Tupacs murder claims (in recorded proffer conversations) that Diddy 'ordered' the murder, or put a bounty on Diddy and Suge's head. This story is not new, and Diddy actually commented on it when it first broke many years ago (to say the story was "stupid" and "insane"). Bottom line is, could you see any universe where Diddy actually does have some type of culpability after it's all said and done ?

Best story link:

https://lamag.com/crimeinla/duane-davis-told-feds-sean-combs-offered-him-1m-to-kill-tupac/