Threatening a lawsuit might in some cases be coersion, but it is not infringement of
anyone's First Amendment rights. I think perhaps you don't fully understand the First Amendment and what it is and is not. The First Amendment states:
***Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.***
So as regards Free Speech, all the First Amendment says is:
Congress cannot pass a law restricting free speech. That's it. There is
no more to it. It does not guarantee a forum for making speeches: Graham cannot demand that the radio station allow him to say whatever he wants any more than an Atheist can come on this board and demand they say whatever they want.
"The first thing to notice here is that, contrary to popular opinion, this amendment does not give people rights to free speech, freedom of religion, freedom of the press, or freedom of assembly, or the right to petition the government for redress of grievances. In fact, the Constitution does not give people any rights whatsoever.
Instead, it operates as a restriction on the interference with rights – rights that preexist both the government and the Constitution. In other words, the reason that the Constitution called the federal government into existence was to protect the exercise of pre-existing, fundamental rights. The purpose of the Bill of Rights was to ensure that the government didn’t use such power (the power to protect rights) to infringe or even destroy such rights.
The second principle to notice in the First Amendment is that the restriction operates on Congress, the elected representatives of the people. The reason that principle is important is that it recognizes that democratically elected officials are likely to use their powers to violate people’s fundamental rights, including freedom of speech, press, and religion."
1NOTE that the First Amendment restricts the government - it does not address anyone else, not CAIR, not this forum, not a newspaper.
"For example, consider a newspaper that publishes an article favoring a certain policy in the community. Imagine that opponents to that policy demand that the newspaper carry an article opposing the policy and that the newspaper refuses to do so.
Some people would undoubtedly cry, “Censorship!” and claim that the First Amendment was being violated. They would be wrong on both counts.
Restrictions on the exercise of free speech are censorship and First Amendment violations only when some law or governmental action is involved. When private entities make personal decisions about what to publish and not publish, they are exercising the fundamental rights of private ownership and liberty – the types of rights whose exercise the government is supposed to protect.
Let’s consider a famous example involving the misapplication of the free-speech principle in order to better understand it. In the 1919 U.S. Supreme Court case of Schenck v. United States, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote, “The most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man in falsely shouting fire in a theatre and causing a panic.”
But Holmes got it wrong. The reason that a man ordinarily cannot scream, “Fire!” in a theater is that the owner of the theater hasn’t permitted it. That is, when a patron enters the theater, he does so on terms established by the owner of the theater, which implicitly include a rule against disturbing the other patrons.
Let’s assume, however, that for some strange reason a theater owner decides to create a rowdy environment and openly declares that anyone who enters his theater can scream, yell, dance, and even issue false warnings of “Fire!” As the owner of the theater, that would be his right, just as it would be the right of people to refrain from patronizing that theater.
Thus, freedom of speech is ultimately grounded in private-property rights. The owner of a newspaper has the right to publish or not publish materials because the newspaper belongs to him. As the owner of the newspaper, he has the right to refuse anyone’s request to communicate through his newspaper. No one has a duty to furnish someone else the means by which he is able to communicate his views. If one person can’t persuade another to publish his views, he is free to open his own newspaper. "
1 (Emphasis added)
CAIR is not the goverment. They are not in violation of the First Amendment, they cannot by definition restrict anyone's civil rights to free speech.
(1)
http://www.lewrockwell.com/hornberger/hornberger8.html
