For years, the state of Nebraska has had a troubled history of cutting corners in its zealous pursuit of lethal-injection drugs to keep its death penalty program alive. In November, the state announced that it would use an experimental drug cocktail not previously used in the United States to carry out its next execution. What the state didn’t reveal, however, is that it was violating federal law when acquiring the ingredients for the lethal cocktail.

In a complaint filed today by the ACLU of Nebraska with the Drug Enforcement Administration, the ACLU has shown that the state of Nebraska is playing fast and loose with DEA registrations in order to covertly obtain and store the drugs it intends to use for executing prisoners. The DEA should seize the drugs Nebraska has unlawfully obtained before they can be used in an execution.

As the complaint shows, a person or entity, including government agencies, needs a DEA registration to import a controlled substance. Federal law also requires those that handle a controlled substance to have a DEA registration particular to their authorized usage. These laws apply to the Nebraska Department of Corrections and to the Nebraska State Penitentiary (NSP), where the state carries out executions. But both institutions are ignoring the law in order to get the execution drugs they need to carry out the death penalty.

In its dissembling, the NSP applied for a DEA importer registration in 2015, 2016, and 2017 — each time falsely claiming to be licensed in Nebraska to handle drugs by referencing a state pharmacy license number not assigned to the prison. The license number listed was registered to a pharmacy operated by the Department of Corrections at a different site, four miles away. But that license is specific to the address of the pharmacy and specific to the persons named in the license application.

Put simply, the state broke the federal law by applying for an import registration for the prison based on the false claim that the prison possessed a state pharmacy license it did not. That licensed was assigned to the state pharmacy, and Nebraska law forbids it from being assigned, borrowed, or used by some other person or entity. In fact, in 2011, the pharmacy itself used this very same license number to apply legally for its own DEA import registration. When the NSP did the same, it was illegal.

The state’s lawbreaking, however, didn’t end there. Not only did the prison obtain its import registration under false pretenses, it is also obtaining drugs the import registration disallows, in particular the deadly-opioid fentanyl.

The prison’s import registration allows it to import schedule 3N and 4N substances, but fentanyl is a schedule 2 drug. Such drugs are among the most addictive and therefore the most tightly regulated. Although the state is presently being sued by the media in Nebraska and the ACLU for disregarding the state’s strong open records laws, the ACLU has obtained a drug inventory, listing both the fentanyl and the DEA import registration number on the top of that inventory.

But the state’s flouting of the law doesn’t end there. Even after improperly procuring execution drugs, the prison still needs a separate DEA registration to maintain and store the drugs. Contrary to its current use, the DEA registration the state possesses only entitles the prison to dispense medication through a hospital or clinic. In fact, while federal law has specific definitions about “dispensing,” which require the involvement of a medical doctor, Nebraska law specifically states that lethal injection is not a medical procedure. The registration NSP currently has does not entitle the state to handle and store its lethal injection drugs.

The state’s cover up is part of a larger pattern of bumbling and incompetent attempts to obtain lethal injection drugs outside of the law. In 2015, the DEA seized a shipment of controlled substances Nebraska had paid thousands for to a sham pharmaceutical company in India, called Harris Pharma, which was unlawfully reselling drugs it had obtained from a legitimate company under a false DEA registration. In its zeal, Nebraska attempted this purchase even after the Food and Drug Administration expressly warned that the purchase would be illegal.

All of this is in service of the state’s attempts to keep its machinery of death churning. In recent months, Nebraska has issued notices to prisoners Jose Sandoval and Carey Dean Moore that it intends to execute them with fentanyl — the same drugs the state unlawfully obtained with its problematic DEA registrations.

We have long held that the death penalty is an abuse of government power, waste of government resources, cruel and unusual, discriminatory in practice, and risks the execution of the innocent. With today’s filing, the DEA has an opportunity to enforce the law, seize the drugs Nebraska improperly obtained, and right the particular wrong the state is perpetrating with its abuse of its registrations. And we all have one more reason to conclude that the state has no business executing human beings.

When the agricultural blood processing plant moved to Sibley, Iowa, five years ago, many people welcomed the prospect of new jobs to the community of just 2,800. But when the plant started making a smell that Josh Harms describes as being like “rancid dog food,” some people changed their mind.

Harms, who grew up in Sibley, decided to use his skills as a web developer to help his community. He created a website called “Should you Move to Sibley?” that was critical of the city's inaction in addressing the smell. But as an ACLU lawsuit filed this week on behalf of Harms details, the city of Sibley didn’t like his criticism and tried to intimidate him into silence.

In response to Harms’ website, the city had an attorney send him a letter threatening legal action if he didn't change the website or take it down altogether. Frightened, Harms altered the site to make it more positive. Under pressure, he even stated on the site that the smell wasn't as much of a problem anymore — even though he actually believes that while it’s improved, it’s still a significant problem.

The city’s efforts to silence Harms, however, extended beyond his website.

The city also instructed Harms, as the lawsuit describes, not to grant an interview with a reporter who contacted him. This despite the fact that the city did talk to the reporter and denied sending him the letter threatening legal action. Harms wanted to publish the letter on his website, but he felt he couldn’t without risking legal repercussions from the city.

And that’s when Harms reached out to the ACLU for help. Cases like his go to the core of the ACLU’s mission in protecting free speech. The right of the people to freely and openly criticize their government is the very foundation of liberal democracy. In America, the government cannot threaten legal action against someone for speaking out against it, be that in person, on a website, or in the media.

The exterior of the IDP agricultural blood processing plant in Sibley.

In his lawsuit, Harms asks to be able — without intimidation or threats of legal action — to revise the website to restore the content that he wants, including stating that the smell is indeed a continuing problem. He also wants to publish on his website the letter from the city threatening legal action as well as other communications from the city. Harms also wants to be free to speak to reporters from his local paper and other media.

The city and Harms may not agree on how much of a problem the odors coming from the blood processing plant are. But it’s absolutely Harms’ First Amendment right to protest the smells — and the government — in his hometown. When city officials try to silence a citizen by threatening legal action, well, that really stinks.

Earlier this year, ACLU attorney Lee Rowland spoke at TEDx University of Nevada to debunk some common misconceptions about free speech. Below is an edited version of her talk.

The year 2017 was a hell of a year for the First Amendment. Nowhere was more central to this culture war than the campuses of universities across America — including right here at the University of Nevada, Reno.

Two students found themselves embroiled in the biggest free speech controversies of recent years. Peter Cytanovic became the face of white nationalism when a picture of him snarling, holding a tiki torch at the Unite the Right Rally in Charlottesville went viral. On the opposite end of the political spectrum, graduate Colin Kaepernick went on to the NFL and used his position to highlight police brutality and racial injustice by taking a knee during the national anthem. Both men became incredibly controversial for their speech. There were calls and campaigns for them to be expelled for their opinions.

But regardless of whether you agree with one of them, both of them, or neither, the First Amendment protects both of those men and their opinions from censorship and retaliation by the government.

That’s a good thing. Let me tell you why.

It’s becoming more common to call for lower legal protections for speech — specifically, that we should criminalize “hate speech.” I hear this from the left a lot. I think many on the left would love a world where Mr. Kaepernick could take a knee without any worry the government would force the NFL to fire him, but where a government school would still have the power to expel Mr. Cytanovic. This is a dangerous proposition.

I’m a progressive. It’s not hard for me to choose between white nationalism and racial justice. The first is abhorrent and racist. The other is a demand for equal rights. But what if we gave the government the power to decide which of those men was too hateful to speak? Look at our current president — he called Charlottesville marchers “very fine people,” while reserving his ire for Black NFL players, whom he called “sons of bitches.” Your idea of “hate speech” may not be the government’s idea of “hate speech.” I know mine isn’t. But even if you agree with Trump — are you sure our next president will agree with your worldview? You shouldn’t be.

That’s why I’m a true believer in the First Amendment. I am an anti-authoritarian. And I know that the government has historically wielded its raw power to silence those who speak truth to power. And because I want students everywhere to be able to take a knee without fear of government censorship, I know we have to cherish our robust First Amendment — even for speech that is hateful.

But even though I’m a free speech attorney, I find many of the common tropes and myths about free speech unsatisfying. I’m going to explain why I’m a true believer by debunking three of these common myths, and, in the process, hopefully reveal three practical tips for exercising your free speech rights powerfully and strategically.

Let’s start with one myth we all learned in kindergarten:

Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.

Does anyone as an adult actually believe this? It’s manifestly untrue. I’m a free speech attorney precisely because I believe that words matter. We cannot protect free speech by denying its power.

So why on earth do we teach this obvious lie to kids? Because humans can be vicious. And when kids are at the receiving end of taunts, we want them empowered, not diminished, in the face of that injustice.

In February, notorious troll Milo Yiannopoulos had a planned speech at the University of California, Berkeley. Students and others in the community went nuts. There were protests. There were riots. Things were set on fire. The administration canceled his talk.

In April, there was a repeat — except this time it was Ann Coulter. She was going to speak, school officials said there would be riots, and they canceled her talk. Both of these individuals then spent 2017 identifying as victims of liberal censorship. And my god the media ate it up — they got more attention for being silenced than they did for trying to peddle actual substantive views.

A goal of professional provocateurs is to provoke the campus community into trying to silence them. Think of campus trolls as schoolyard bullies. Oh, their words definitely hurt. But the real question is: How do we respond to that hurt? A troll wants you to censor them. It feeds into their power and gives them something to sell. You don’t have to play that role.

Yes, there is power in hateful words. But there is also power in sass — in unwillingness to be goaded into a fight or to play the role of censor.

But not all words wound in the same way. That brings us to our second myth:

Hate speech isn’t protected by the First Amendment.

I often hear younger people say that hate speech isn’t protected by the First Amendment. But that’s untrue. As President Trump’s views of Mr. Kaepernick should make plain, “hate speech” is a flexible concept. Just this week, the Spanish government arrested and charged a man with “hate speech” for calling cops “slackers” on Facebook. That’s what criticizing the government looks like without a First Amendment. “Hate speech” can easily be redefined as speech that threatens the state.

But we shouldn’t only protect speech out of paranoia — there’s an upshot here, too. Our history shows the same First Amendment that protects hateful, racist speech can be and has been used by civil rights advocates to protect historically vulnerable communities.

Charles Brandenburg was an avowed racist convicted of “incitement to violence” for holding an Ohio Ku Klux Klan rally in the late 1960s. The KKK’s lawyers took it all the way up to the Supreme Court, arguing his hateful ideas were protected by the First Amendment. The Supreme Court agreed with Brandenburg that his vicious, genocidal talk about Jews and Black people was constitutionally protected because it only fantasized about future violence. The court decided that before the government can punish speech, there has to be an immediate and specific risk of actual violence to a real person.

In a vacuum, that result might upset you. But at around the same time, NAACP leader and civil rights icon Charles Evers gave a passionate speech advocating a boycott of racist, white-owned businesses. He promised that he’d “break the damn neck” of any activist who broke the boycott. White business owners sued Evers and the NAACP for — you guessed it — “incitement,” arguing that his violent language had led to riots. But the NAACP looked to that Brandenberg case. Those civil rights leaders appealed all the way to the Supreme Court, to be sure that Mr. Evers benefitted from the same rights as a KKK member. And they succeeded.

The court boiled it down to this question: Are we talking about theoretical future violence, or is there an immediate risk of harm to a real person? And while there is nothing equivalent about the KKK and the NAACP, from that point of view, these cases looked the same.

There is reason to be skeptical that the rights extended to a KKK member will actually trickle down to someone like an NAACP leader. The hard truth is that every right in our society first gets distributed to the privileged and powerful. Americans did not get the right to vote at the same time regardless of sex or race. Today, your rights during an arrest — or your right to carry a gun — do not look the same for all races.

But would you say the answer to that uneven distribution of rights is to eliminate the very constitutional protections that enable us to fight the government when it violates them? No. Distributing our constitutional rights equally is a process. The First Amendment is no different.

It’s our job to ensure that everyone benefits from the same level of constitutional protection, that our free speech rights are truly “indivisible.” Our First Amendment is necessary to ensure that those who challenge the government are not silenced — but that’s not sufficient to ensure justice. We have to do the rest of the work.

So, are today’s students up for it? That brings us to our third and final myth:

Students today are snowflakes.

Public schools and universities are governed by the First Amendment. That means they can’t just keep hateful people off campus because of their views. That means Black and Jewish students have had to face white supremacists on campus; immigrant students have been demonized; women have had to endure campus speakers calling feminism a cancer. I guarantee you that most adults don’t have to pass by a group of people calling for their extermination on their walk into work. I don’t think students are snowflakes. I think you’re badasses.

When I tell you trying to silence or censor political enemies is wrong, it’s not because I think it’s weak. It’s because I think it’s unstrategic and strengthens the force of your opponents. But if silencing hateful speech isn’t an option, what does it look like to be empowered in the face of hate?

Learn more about Students' Free Speech Rights

Sometimes the answer will be in your numbers. In August 2017, a group of alt-right protesters planned a gathering at Boston Common, labelling it the “Free Speech Rally.” Only dozens of the permit holders showed up. But ringing the Common were 40,000 people standing strong against racism. That huge counter-protest sent a powerful message of resistance: a blizzard of snowflakes. And it made clear the foolishness of one group trying to own the brand of “free speech.”

Sometimes all it takes is a single person to make a powerful statement. A few years ago, a musician, appalled by a KKK rally in his hometown of Charleston, didn’t bother to try to refute the racist ideas — he just followed them around with a sousaphone, loudly oompah-oompahing along. His message of protest was clear — without a single word. The marchers disbanded in short order when forced to peddle their message of hate over a goofy tuba line.

I believe in the First Amendment because it is our most powerful tool to keep the government from regulating the conversations that spark change in the world. If you want to keep having conversations that can change the world, you should embrace the First Amendment too — messiness and all.

I hope unpacking these myths has helped reveal some truths about how we can strategically exercise our powerful First Amendment rights:

Know your history. Know that the same high-water mark that has protected the most vile and hateful speakers has also protected civil rights and anti-war advocates.

Don’t silence your way out of a debate. Remember that a provocateur wants you to play censor. If you know that a speaker you disagree with — or one you believe is dangerous — is coming to your campus, remember how counterproductive silencing tactics can be.

Dance to your own tune. You can decide when to counter-protest, when to stage an alternative event, and when to ignore ideas unworthy of debate. The very choices you make for confronting — or ignoring — speech you abhor can become benchmarks for how you handle conflict throughout your life.