Starts:

Friday December 12, 2025

    12:00 PM

Ends:

    2:00 PM

For non-member event reservations: please email pfitzgerald@democraticwoman.org or telephone 202-232-7363 Ext. 402 (voicemails will also be accepted).

Who determines who is entitled to free speech? The Constitution guarantees it through the First Amendment — but can that freedom be limited, and if so, by whom? Join us for an engaging Table Talk discussion with two distinguished legal experts, Carrie DeCell and Rachel Levinson-Waldman, as we examine recent challenges to First Amendment rights and explore how we can safeguard free expression for all.

EVENT DETAILS:

• Cash bar with light lunch and roundtable discussions.
• $20 members, $25 nonmembers plus tax.

DeCell is a senior staff attorney and legislative adviser at the Knight First Amendment Institute. Her work focuses on freedom of speech on social media, government surveillance of speech at the border, and digital-age threats to freedom of the press. DeCell leads the institute’s litigation in Dada v. NSO Group, a lawsuit on behalf of journalists and other members of the news organization El Faro, who were the victims of spyware attacks using NSO Group’s Pegasus spyware. She also leads litigation challenging the government’s mass collection and indefinite retention of visa applicants’ social media identifiers. DeCell has been published or quoted in The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Washington Post, The Guardian, The Intercept, and Just Security, and she has appeared on Democracy Now!, NPR’s All Things Considered, ABC’s The Signal, and Al Jazeera’s The Listening Post. She is a former senior associate at Jenner & Block LLP, where she was a member of the firm’s Media & First Amendment and Appellate & Supreme Court practice groups. DeCell graduated from the University of Pennsylvania and Harvard Law School, where she served as the essays and book reviews editor of the Harvard Law Review. Following law school, she clerked for the Honorable Judith W. Rogers on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. 

Levinson-Waldman is director of the Liberty and National Security Program at the Brennan Center for Justice, where she works to shed light on the government’s use of surveillance technologies and authorities and its collection and use of data for law enforcement and homeland security purposes. She has authored articles and reports on topics including DHS's counterterrorism efforts 20 years after 9/11, the government’s use of social media, and the constitutional implications of law enforcement surveillance in public. Levinson-Waldman has written and provided expert input for publications including The Guardian, The Washington Post, Wired, The Atlantic, and The New Republic. From February to June 2024, she served as an Ian Axford Fellow in Public Policy for the New Zealand Office of the Privacy Commissioner in Wellington, New Zealand. She previously served as senior counsel to the American Association of University Professors and trial counsel in the Housing and Civil Enforcement Section of the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice and was a law clerk to the Honorable Margaret M. McKeown of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. She is a graduate of Williams College and the University of Chicago Law School.

*Please note: Guests, with the exception of members’ spouses and domestic partners, may attend a maximum of three paid events from July 1, 2025, to June 30, 2026. After the third event, they must join the Club to continue attending events.* 

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