Congress Is About To Make This Post Telling You When To Celebrate SCOTUS Justice Birthdays Illegal
from the the-JSPA-is-really-that-terrible dept
The US Supreme Court has a big year ahead with lots of weighty matters to consider in 2023. But the seriousness of their job doesn’t mean we can’t celebrate each justice’s special day! If you would like to know when to fill your heart with warm birthday wishes for your favorite justice, here are all their birthdays in this handy convenient form.
First up next year is the Chief Justice, with Chief Justice Roberts celebrating his birthday on January 27. Being born in 1955, he will turn 68. Then, hot on his heels, the very next day is Justice Barrett’s birthday, with her, a 1972 baby, turning 51. It falls on a Saturday, though, so perhaps there will be cupcakes in chambers to celebrate both on Friday?
Then while we are celebrating Lincoln’s birthday it will also be time to celebrate Justice Kavanaugh’s birthday too, who, having been born in 1965, will be turning 58. After that, April Fool’s! Because back in 1950 Justice Alito was born on April 1 and now will be 73.
At the end of the month we’ll fete the 63rd birthday of Justice Kagan, honoring her birth on April 28, 1960. After that, the justices will all be hard at work, penning many of their most important decisions from the term, and hopefully in time that Justice Thomas and Justice Sotomayor can enjoy their 75th and 69th birthdays without stress on June 23 and June 25, respectively, with him having been born in 1948 and her in 1954 (again, one falls on the weekend, so the best day for cupcakes definitely seems to be that Friday).
But it’s possible that Justices Gorsuch and Jackson will have to go without cupcakes at court, what with their 56th and 53rd birthdays falling during the summer, before the justices may have reconvened to hear cases for the next term. Justice Gorsuch celebrates his birth on August 29, 1967, and Justice Jackson celebrates hers on September 14, 1970.
In any case, if you would like to know the best days to exude festive birthday vibes towards the Supreme Court, now you do. But you’d better copy down this information now, because Congress is poised to make this post illegal.
The problem is the DAJSPA (Daniel Anderl Judicial Security and Privacy Act), which is back and currently glued onto this year’s must-pass NDAA bill, where Congress likes to put lots of bad bills that would never pass scrutiny if their colleagues actually had a chance to think about and separately vote on them. Because if they did stop to think about this bill, they might then notice the glaring First Amendment problem in how it prohibits the sharing of truthful and otherwise lawful information that the public is entitled to know, and may even need to know. (As far as this post is concerned, see Sec. 5933(1)(A), which makes judges’ information subject to a prohibition against sharing, (4)(A) making the bill reach Supreme Court justices, and (2)(A)(viii) covering the full date of birth as data no one will be allowed to share. See also Sec. 5934(d)(1)(B)(i) with the basic prohibition against sharing this information, and (f) supplying penalties, if one does anyway, although note that some of this language may be in flux, but the core prohibition so far is not.)
It is true, of course, that the motivation behind this bill comes from the genuine and serious concern of wanting to make sure our federal judges and their families are safe. Our constitutional order depends on them being able to dispense justice without fear of harm, and there is absolutely no quarrel with Congress generally wanting to put policy measures in place to make sure the judiciary can’t be disrupted by threats of violence. The issue is with the specific measure chosen, which is neither constitutional nor effective.
This law attempts to forbid the sharing of publicly available, truthful information, which is not a prohibition the First Amendment can tolerate. It is anathema to the Constitution to restrict discussion of public information, including and especially about government officials. Yet that’s what this bill does: hobble civilian oversight over public officials by taking away access to the information needed to do it. And it would do so without delivering any measurable increase in safety, because security via obscurity only creates the illusion of security – those determined to do harm will still be able to discover what they need to do it. (Including because this bill only makes it illegal to share this information online, which is also an unconstitutional distinction between online and offline speech, which is all supposed to be protected. Although it’s not like banning the sharing of this information in any form would make this bill any better.)
But even superficially, some of our judges and justices are the most significant public figures in American life with tremendous influence and power over millions of lives. Surely the idea that a law could prevent us from tweeting or tooting about their birthdays in a way that gives away their ages (which is, at minimum, relevant for senior status) should serve as a pretty clear indicator of the significant problems with this bill. Because if legislation stands to produce this sort of absurd by-product, then it’s inevitably producing a lot more ill-considered consequences we also can’t afford, as any law that tries to prevent the sharing of truthful information always will.
To forestall immediate disaster this bill, at minimum, needs to be removed from any must-pass legislation that Congress intends to get through without further consideration before the end of the year. But it is doubtful that even any further consideration will ever be able to produce language that can successfully avoid the huge problems it portends, because at its very core what this bill intends to do is such a direct affront to what the First Amendment protects, and why.
Filed Under: 1st amendment, birthdays, congress, dajspa, daniel anderl, free speech, must pass, ndaa, supreme court
Comments on “Congress Is About To Make This Post Telling You When To Celebrate SCOTUS Justice Birthdays Illegal”
Child: Mom could we have a functional body of government that respects the balance of law?
Mom: No child, we already have a functional body of government at home.
Functional body of government at home:
Justices deserve more protections, because they are more equal than other people.
Re:
The government makes determinations regarding whether information regarding certain individuals is protected or not. And the supreme Court has ruled that in those cases it is not a violation of the first Amendment rather it is a reasonable exercise in the public good.
As an example information regarding confidential informants or persons in witness protection program cannot be disseminated.
Now obviously it’s not a national security issue however it is of interest to law enforcement to prevent harm against those persons.
Courts have long ruled that restricting personal information regarding individuals from dissemination to prevent harm against those people is legal and constitutional.
Again I would refer to the fact that the first amendment is not absolute the right to free speech is not absolute.
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I wouldn’t even call them Justices anymore. More like Injustices.
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I see what you did there.
A let’s drive plotting of criminal acts onto means of communication that are much harder for the police to monitor bill. That’s not to say that they have been particularly good at monitoring plats being made without any encryption.
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Re:
Once again things on techdirt are represented completely differently than in reality.
Since this is a commentary site, a place of public discourse, and almost journalism, there is a clear Free speech exemption clause in the bill.
I) the transfer of the covered information of the at-risk individual or immediate family if the information is relevant to and displayed as part of a news story, commentary, editorial, or other speech on a matter of public concern;
So this post would not be made illegal under the ACT even if the persons in question had magically somehow figured out Cathy Gellis was going to make a post about Supreme Court Justice’s birthdays and all the justices individually wrote to Cathy Gellis and stated please don’t disseminate our birthdays.
Yes that’s right the people in question have to actually make a request in writing that the individual or business that is going to disseminate the information not disseminate it.
the only blanket prohibition against dissemination is data brokers and government agencies.
I would recommend that the author and tector in general do a more in-depth reading of the actual billing question. If they had, they would have noticed that there was a free speech exemption.
Re: Re:
Please reconcile: in what context is speech about a public figure (a judge) not speech about a matter of public concern?
Please address: in what way is it constitutional to restrict speech based on the topic of the speech?
Please address: in what way can disseminating publicly available information be rendered illegal without addressing constitutional concerns?
Please address: the intersection of speech targeted by the bill and anonymous speech (which theoretically could not be served with a take down notice).
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Re: Re: Re:
Nobody’s saying that speech about a judge isn’t a matter of public concern but you don’t have to disclose the judge’s birthday or their address or their telephone number to discuss public concerns about the judge.
The bill clearly allows for public commentary that requires the publication of personal information.
However, several States currently prohibit publication of personal information including telephone numbers and addresses of elected officials and police officers. I’ve linked to the site that identifies those statutes and arguably most include verbiage that states ‘with intention to inflict harm’.
The statutes also allow for elected officials to request that news media do not disclose their personal information during times of identified potential threat.
Lastly existing federal law prohibits the dissemination of personal information with respect to persons in the witness protection program. Doing so can result in up to 5 years imprisonment and a $5,000 fine.
Furthermore you can say justice XYZ was born in 1960.
You could also say justice XYZ was born on March 27th and neither would be a violation of the building question.
The bill allows for publication of the birthdate in its entirety if it falls within the exemptions, in the same way that precedent allows for the publication of extreme sexual imagery as long as it falls within the exemption of not depicting underage persons, and not obscene. The definition of obscene is based on the ‘perception of the average member of a community’ and not an explicit definition.
So there’s a risk for everyone that undertakes speech for their speech not to fall within certain baskets of unprotected speech lest they risk prosecution.
Re: Re: Re:2
“you don’t have to disclose the judge’s birthday or their address or their telephone number to discuss public concerns about the judge”
You’re the first one to bring up phone numbers. Birth dates are a matter of public record, and places the justices at zero additional risk. The fact that I can go on to Wikipedia and see that Clarence Thomas was born on June 23, 1948 in Pin Point, Georgia and follow a summary of his childhood that he has talked about many times does not prevent him from doing his job.
However, trying to hide this information from the public will call into question how honest and open the justices are in the decisions they make, since we don’t know what else they’re hiding.
“The bill allows for publication of the birthdate in its entirety if it falls within the exemptions, in the same way that precedent allows for the publication of extreme sexual imagery as long as it falls within the exemption of not depicting underage persons”
I honestly didn’t expect people trying to conflate adult birthdays and child porn today, but here we are.
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Re: Re: Re:
— Censoring speech by topic
Since imagery is speech, and censorship regarding images of underage children is valid law, that is one example of censoring speech based on the topic of the speech.
Note that this is based on the anticipation of potential threat or harm to the person’s in question based on dissemination of personal information. Therefore the class already exists of people for whom the dissemination of personal information should be prohibited.
–Criminalizing dissemination of public information
Regardless if information is already in the public domain or not, knowingly disseminating information that one knows to be classified is illegal.
–Anonymous Speech
Anonymous speech likely is no longer protected due to the Court’s ruling in roe v Wade.
In Roe the Supreme Court ruled that there is no expectation of privacy in the Constitution.
Therefore the expectation of anonymous speech is no longer necessarily valid. Although a lack of right to privacy doesn’t necessarily abolish a right to anonymous speech does at the very least drastically weaken the doctrine of anonymous speech.
I was just simply pointing out current law and precedent.
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Obviously you didn’t read the bill.
Firstly, the judge or immediate family member has has to request in writing that you do not disseminate the information.
Secondly even if the judge somehow magically finds out that you’re going to post something and asks in writing that you don’t,
Here is the Free speech exemption:
Exemptions
I) the transfer of the covered information of the at-risk individual or immediate family if the information is relevant to and displayed as part of a news story, commentary, editorial, or other speech on a matter of public concern;
so yeah your post wouldn’t be illegal because they didn’t know that you were going to post it. Or that anybody else was going to share it.
Re:
And then they “ask” you to take it down: What then?
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Re: Re:
Well if it doesn’t meet the exemption you have to take it down.
An exemption is an exemption. Regardless of whether they ask you to remove it or not.
I mean it’s very clear that a reference site like Wikipedia having the birthdays of supreme Court justices available doesn’t violate the statute because students need reference data to write reports on supreme Court justices and education is a public concern.
I mean read the bill yourself and see if it’s such an onerous requirement that it has a chilling effect on speech.
Regardless what techdirt would have you believe the first amendment is not absolute. The government can constitutionally restrict speech regarding people, judges issue gag orders all the time and they are constitutional.
The government can compel speech. The 5th Amendment prohibition against self-incrimination disappears if the government removes punishment, in such cases the government has compelled speech, the witness cannot remain silent and it has been found to be constitutional.
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Karl, just because you have longer posts doesn’t give you free range to be condescending towards people.
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Re: Re: Re:2
I’m not being condescending.
It’s a common thread across several of the articles and many articles across multiple authors on techdirt that somehow the first Amendment provides absolute right to speech regardless of what the speech is and that the government has no reasonable basis for restricting speech.
That’s ridiculous and laughable on it’s face.
Libel, slander, fraudulent speech these are all illegal and the government is in effect censoring that speech constitutionally.
And let’s be 100% clear: I have no right at all to post on Cathy Gellis’s page. I post at her pleasure and her sufferance. This is a private forum and My first Amendment rights do not exist.
Re: Re: Re:3
I’ve never seen any Techdirt author declare—or even imply—that to be the case. Everyone here knows (or should know) the First Amendment has limits. (Hell, that’s why I use the phrases “legal speech” and “legally protected speech”.) What’s being discussed here is why this restriction on currently legal speech may not be reasonable even when taking other such restrictions into account.
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Re: Re: Re:4
In Ms. Gellis’ article regarding California Privacy, she states (paraphrased). ‘this isn’t Europe, the first amendment isn’t balanced against the government’s interests’
When it absolutely is. There is 200 years of jurisprudence that constrains Free speech rights and balances any encumbrance upon free speech versus the interest of the government to help regulate the public good.
And the deliberate statement that the post that she made would be illegal, when the bill in question explicitly gives an exemption for commentary and speech that’s relevant to public discourse.
There are limitations to protected speech, two of those being integral to illegal conduct, and incitement to imminent lawless action.
The text of the bill providing an exemption is very clear regarding commentary.
The bill also requires that a judge or person at risk explicitly request in writing that protected information not be disseminated. Obviously, the remedy if someone wishes to disseminate the information but gets a written request not to is to seek relief from the court.
Unless one believes that the justices will send out a written request to every person or even a substantial number of people in the United States requesting that the information not be disseminated all persons in the United States are free to disseminate the information.
Because the law requires a request in writing sent from a judge or family members to a person before that person is even at risk under this bill means that there is no harm to speech.
The bill does not prevent speech by people it does not prevent anybody from posting judges birthdays unless they have received an explicit request in writing not to do so from the judge question, and the reason for the speech is not exempted.
It is clear the bill is written to prevent the dissemination of personal information for use in illegal conduct or as part of incitement to imminent lawless action, which are valid interests of the government as held by SCOTUS for decades.
Could the bill be tailored more narrowly? Possibly.
Re: Re: Re:5
Those constraints are few and far between because that 1A-related jurisprudence is exceedingly clear about the government needing to have a really, really, really good reason to restrict speech. I’m sure the government would love to silence a lot of speech that is currently legal but the government dislikes for whatever reason. The First Amendment is there to make sure that doesn’t happen. Ergo, 1A is tipped in favor of the people rather than the government—if it weren’t, the government could ban any kind of speech it wanted to and claim doing so is about “regulat[ing] the public good”.
Do you think judges will care when deciding whether to protect other judges?
If someone is aware of the law and knows that they could end up in even the smallest amount of legal hot water for publishing a judge’s birthday, they may decide not to publish that information as a means of avoiding the wrath of the government. Legal experts would likely call that a “chilling effect”.
Publishing information can be a neutral act. What should be done to me under the law if I were to publish that kind of information without any criminal intent in mind and someone I don’t even know later uses that information as part of a criminal act?
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Re: Re: Re:6
Yes actually I do believe that the exemptions matter and that there is no prohibition against publishing the information unless a judge has already asked you not to in writing only about them.
I also believe that judges will apply the law fairly.
You are operating under the false assumption that everyone is prohibited from publishing any birth date information about federal judges based on this bill. That’s completely not true.
Anybody literally anybody that is not a government agency or a data broker can publish judges information all they want up to the point they get a written request not to disseminate the specific information. Then there’s the whole exemption even in the case where they were asked not to disseminate it.
If you’ve already sent it, without being asked not to send it, you didn’t violate the bill.
Like I said, the title of the article above is false and misleading.
In fact the exemption regarding public commentary specifically protects Ms. Gellis from any harm. It also protects any person from saying I believe that this bill is a bad idea and I should be able to publish this Justice’s birthday. That is a valid public commentary on the law and the birth date and is exempted from prosecution under the bill.
So where is the harm? How is speech chilled?
It is not a blanket prohibition, the first step requires that a Justice actually request in writing an individual does not disseminate specific information.
How would they know to ask you not to publish it?
In order to be at risk for prosecution under this bill you had to have already received a request not to publish a justices birth date from that specific Justice in writing — before you published it.
I don’t know if you realize that or not.
Re: Re: Re:7
Therein lies the issue: If someone knows they could get a letter and thus embroil yourself in a legal matter they don’t want to deal with, they’re going to think twice about publishing the information even if they don’t have any criminal intent. That would be the epitome of a law having a chilling effect on free speech—and it’s what this bill could do if it becomes law.
Maybe at the end of a long legal battle, sure. But if someone doesn’t want to go to court and deal with this bullshit, they’ll likely refuse to publish the information outright if they haven’t already or take the information down if they have. Chilling effect, law, etc.
And if you believe that, I own a bridge in Brooklyn that you might have an interest in buying.
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Re: Re: Re:8
It actually says in the bill that you have to have received a request in writing from the judge to not publish some particular information about them or a family member at risk. It literally says that.
If you’ve already published it that means you’ve already spoken so regardless of whether you receive a letter to not publish it you’re at no harm.
If you argue that you’re at risk for a judge going against the statute and prosecuting you anyway then you’re at risk for any mis-prosecution so your argument fails as well.
FYI, the same statute already exists in basically the same form for all elected officials and police officers in several States.
https://privacyforcops.org/privacy
Re: Re: Re:9
Guess what? Someone is probably going to think twice about publishing that information if they think they’re going to get in legal hot water after publishing it. That is, again, a chilling effect on speech.
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Re: Re: Re:8
Let’s take an explicit example, people in witness protection.
Regardless of whether or not a journalist wants imminent harm to happen to somebody in the witness protection program, publishing information about people in the witness protection program is illegal.
It’s up to 5 years in jail and up to $5,000 fine.
So there are cases where the interest of the government outweighs in a constitutional manner the interest of the people to free speech.
Several States already prohibit publication of personal information including addresses of elected officials and police officers.
If you argue that the person publishing information has to intend for harm to happen, then you think it’s okay for journalists to expose people in witness protection, or secret agents, or undercover police officers.
All of which are illegal, you will get thrown in jail, and all the free speech arguments in the world will not help you.
It’s unfortunate that federal judges need to be added to the list of people that we protect from general threats, by limiting publication of their personal information.
For your information, several States currently prohibit the publication of personal information including addresses and phone numbers of elected officials and police officers and that has withstood challenge.
Re: Re: Re:5
Hi Karl,
I need to correct you here. Cathy is absolutely correct. While there are exceptions to the 1st Amendment, they are mostly clear and well defined. It is generally accepted that there is a very short list, and that the Supreme Court has made it clear they are not looking to add to that list. The widely used list is here:
https://www.freedomforuminstitute.org/about/faq/which-types-of-speech-are-not-protected-by-the-first-amendment/
The courts generally look to see if speech falls into those categories or not. They do not conduct a “balancing” test to see if new categories can or should be added, and have explicitly rejected attempts to add a balancing test.
The EU, on the other hand, does allow for a balancing test.
That is what Cathy was referring to, and she is correct.
I’d also recommend reading this post by 1st Amendment lawyer Ken White, as you seem to be violating a number of these tropes:
https://www.popehat.com/2015/05/19/how-to-spot-and-critique-censorship-tropes-in-the-medias-coverage-of-free-speech-controversies/
I will let Cathy speak for herself, but even that creates a serious 1st Amendment problem as the underlying speech still does not fit into the accepted categories of unprotected speech listed above. So carving out an “exemption” does not fix the bill.
It also still creates problems for news sites, because even with the exemption, should someone seek to enforce this law against us, we would need to go to court to make the case that we qualify for the exemption, which is still punishing us for our speech.
Yes. As stated above. The issue is that the bill seeks to create a new class. But the 1st Amendment does not allow that.
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Re: Re: Re:6
The class of protected persons where publication of personal information is prohibited already exists.
Federal law already provides for the prohibition of information regarding people in witness protection, specifically because of the general threat that such disclosure of information may provide.
State law already prohibits publication of personal information of elected officials and police officers.
https://privacyforcops.org/privacy
Perhaps you were unaware of that.
Balancing ad hoc or balancing with respect to a general class and then determining whether speech fits in that class is the same thing.
It still results in the fact that first amendment speech is not absolute.
And the court expands the categories all the time. As in the case of the woman convicted of inciting her boyfriend to suicide.
BTW, there is no blanket ban against publication except for Government Agencies, and “data brokers”.
In order to run afoul of the proposed bill, an individual must have received a written request from the Justice in question to not disseminate information. An ex post facto request does not put one at risk.
This is clearly an extension of several state laws that allow elected officials including judges to make written requests of news media outlets when a perceived threat to the safety of those officials is underway.
Perhaps the verbiage could be included in this bill however the explicit exception that includes the term ‘commentary’ easily functions as a catch-all that prevents any chilling effect on speech.
The bill leaves plenty of room for you to publish personally identifiable information about justices that have not requested that you don’t.
Your speech is chilled to no greater degree than your speech is chilled against publishing the identities of people in witness protection or clandestine agents of the United States intelligence services. (Which is not protected speech)
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Re: Re:
What’s even funnier, is that the statute identifies the birthday information as “the full date of birth”.
Meaning if you stated that a Justice was born in 1960, that doesn’t fall under the bill.
If you also stated the Justice was born March 27th, that doesn’t fall under the bill.
The wording of the bill does not say all the information regarding the birth date of a person at risk. It’s specifically States full birth date, meaning, any incomplete birthdate, regardless of whether you can add together incomplete birthdays and gather all the information, doesn’t run afoul of the statute.
The writers of the bill are a little bit touched but also the author of this article didn’t read the bill, rather shouted “you can’t abridge free speech” — but you can, constitutionally, and the court has found so multiple times.
Re: Re: Re:
You can’t abridge free speech. The courts have abridged functional spoken word in limited cases. It is legal to shout fire in a movie theater, it is illegal to threaten with fire a great mass of people peacefully watching a movie.
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Re: Re: Re:2
Completely false.
The government abridges Free speech all the time constitutionally based on decades of supreme Court rulings.
Yelling fire in a crowded theater when it is not actually a fire is illegal.
Speech integral to illegal behavior is not protected speech.
There is a whole list of types of speech that are not protected under the first Amendment.
Re: Re: Re:3
That would mean an actor shouting “fire” during a play when there is no actual fire going on in the theater would’ve committed an illegal act. And yet, I don’t recall anyone ever being arrested for that.
Also, the whole “fire in a crowded theater” thing originates from a SCOTUS decision banning anti-draft propaganda that only ever called for a peaceful resistance to the draft—a decision, might I add, that was later overturned because SCOTUS realized how awful that decision was. The phrase is supportive of censorship, not of free speech. Please educate yourself.
Yeah, and it’s short as hell:
You can add little subcategories to two of those, but those three categories are the major categories of unprotected/“illegal” speech. Unless I missed something, which is entirely possible, because I’m not the brightest bulb in the marquee.
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Re: Re: Re:4
Actually the list is quite long.
And of course during an actual theatrical performance as part of the play it wouldn’t be illegal.
But it is illegal to shout fire in a crowded theater. Such speech is not protected.
Fraudulent speech is not protected.
Knowingly false speech is not protected.
Incitement to illegal activities is not protected even in the case of telling somebody over and over and over to kill themselves. The supreme Court declined to hear the appeal of a woman in Massachusetts who was convicted for inciting her boyfriend to suicide.
Speech integral to unlawful activity is not protected.
Threatening speech is not protected. (true threats)
“fighting words” are not protected speech and that is the term as used by the court. Those are words that tend to “incite an immediate breach of the Peace.” That was ruled on by the supreme Court in 1942.
So you telling me that you’re going to kick my ass and then I’m a dick head is not protected speech because it can be reasonably assumed that I would violently retaliate.
Copyright infringement is not protected.
Threatening the president vice president or speaker of the House is a federal crime and it is not protected speech.
You should educate yourself.
Re: Re: Re:5
Holy contradiction, Batman!
Fair point.
We all tell lies—to ourselves and to others. But not all lies are unprotected speech. Perjury and defamation aren’t protected, but lying to get out of an event you have no interest in attending certainly is.
And therein lies the issue with this bill: If I publish a judge’s birthdate without any criminal intent, and someone uses that information to commit a criminal act, the bill could put me on the hook for at least civil liability because my speech proved “integral to unlawful activity”.
I’m gonna kick your ass, dickhead.
Now have me arrested for saying that here and now.
Godfuckingdammit, of all the fucking things to forget…stupid, stupid, how can you be this fucking stupid, you stupid son of a bitch…gotta always remember copyright, gotta always remember copyright, JFC, how could you fucking forget that…
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Re: Re: Re:6
It’s clearly not going to incite an imminent breach of the Peace.
However if a police officer heard you state that to me in a threatening manner walking down the street it is not protected speech and you would be arrested regardless of whether you think you wouldn’t. I’ve seen it happen.
And that brings out a whole another set of speech that’s not protected.
Speech that in general breaches the peace and causes loss of quiet enjoyment.
Such as a noise ordinance. Or a State requiring permits for a demonstration.
Just because you or someone else has not been arrested for some sort of speech does not mean that all of your speech is protected speech.
If you lie to get out of an event that you are supposed to attend because you don’t want to attend it and it is part of fraudulent behavior, then absolutely you can go to jail for lying to get out of attending an event that you don’t want to attend.
I guess you forgot about fraud. Cuz fraud is basically lying, yet it’s not perjury or defamation.
Re: Re: Re:7
alright jesus christ you win okay
Re: Re: Re:5 Physician heal thyself
“You should educate yourself.”
https://www.popehat.com/2016/06/11/hello-youve-been-referred-here-because-youre-wrong-about-the-first-amendment/
“But it is illegal to shout fire in a crowded theater. Such speech is not protected.”
dude…
https://www.popehat.com/2015/05/19/how-to-spot-and-critique-censorship-tropes-in-the-medias-coverage-of-free-speech-controversies/
“Knowingly false speech is not protected.”
Then it’s a good thing your ignorance is genuine I suppose…
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Re: Re: Re:4
Now let’s look at a very specific case of almost complete censorship of speech that courts have ruled unanimously is constitutional and is completely based not on any criminal activity, but on the potential of harmful speech.
Without being convicted of any criminal action and solely on testimony provided by a single person and the determination of a judge a civil order of protection from abuse that censors all speech towards a person regardless of harmful speech or not is currently lawful and implemented millions of times across the United States.
A protection from abuse order is only a civil document no criminal activity has been deemed to have occurred. However the person is enjoined from any and all contact even through third parties with the person under protection.
Violation of protection from abuse orders commonly results in a felony and jail time.
So if the state can act which such Force to prevent potential harm from speech in the case of a protection from abuse order, why can it not censor specific topics to prevent potential harm?
Sexual imagery of children, EVEN CARTOONS, is unprotected speech. If it is constitutional to censor imagery based on the subject matter, why is it not constitutional to censor speech or electronic communications based on the subject matter?
The basis of the compelling State interest with respect to censorship of child sexual imagery is the same as the prohibition of personal information prevention of potential future harm.
So a case where censorship of the topic of speech on the basis of preventing potential harm already exists.
The argument brought by people against this bill is that the right of people to publish a birthday overwhelms the right of a judge to be protected against potential harm.
If cartoons depicting sexual activities by children are prohibited speech in the interest of the government preventing potential harm to children, why is it not okay to prohibit the dissemination of specific information about federal judges to prevent potential harm to said judges?
And for all those who don’t realize it yes, cartoons depicting sexual activities by children is considered obscene and the Supreme Court has ruled that it is unprotected speech.
Re: Re: Re:5
I said you win what more do you want
Re: Re: Re:6 The shoe is on the other hand or something
Well now this is a first. Stephen is KO’d by a wall of text.
Re: Re: Re:7
Karl’d Out?
Re: Re: Re:4 Not Quite
The decision was Schenck v. United States, 249 U.S. 47 (03-Mar-1919). Conviction for distributing flyers urging resistance to draft was upheld, with the infamous ``fire” quote included. It would be hard to argue with a straight face that it was not wrong when decided or that it has aged well.
Since that case, there have been many decisions which seek to limit the reach of Schenck, but so far as I recall none has repudiated it. The rule, if you can call it that, was that the caracter of every act depends on its circumstances.
The author, Holmes, sought to walk that ruling back, but without success.
Today you could probably argue that the flyers in question in Schenck did not fall into one of the seven categories of recognized exceptions, Stevens v. United States 559 U.S. 460 (20-Apr-2010). But no one has expressly receded from Schenck, to the disgrace of the Supremes.
We have other embarrassing decisions not expressly receded from, e.g. Koramatsu, Frances, Kelo.
My objection to this bill is simple:
The Supreme Court has already ruled that threats of being shot or having your home bombed, at a time when you’ve been shot at at your place of work and had your place of work bombed, is not sufficient grounds to prohibit publication of your personal information nor to bar the people making your threats from coming near your home.
The threat of being yelled at should likewise not be sufficient grounds to prohibit publication of the Justice’s personal information nor to bar protestors from gathering outside their homes.
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Re:
Can you cite the case?
As far as preventing people who’ve made threats against you from coming near your home, that is what a restraining order is for.
I guarantee if you have evidence that someone is making a threat against you, you can file a restraining order against them in your circuit or district Court and they cannot come within x number of feet of your place of business your home or anywhere else that you are unless they also have a right to be somewhere in public where you just happen to be.
Now to the first Amendment and unprotected speech.
Incitement to violence, incitement to imminent unlawful action, and speech that’s integral to illegal conduct are not protected and there is a huge body of precedent and supreme Court rulings.
In fact it is unprotected speech to continually attempt to incite someone to commit suicide. The supreme Court refused to hear an appeal regarding a woman’s conviction in the case of her boyfriend’s suicide.
https://www.cnn.com/2020/01/13/politics/supreme-court-michelle-carter-boyfriend-suicide/index.html
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It is worth noting that no, the Michelle Carter case does not mean that is unprotected speech to continually incite suicide simply because the Supreme Court failed to take the case up.
It is binding precedent in Massachusetts because of the state supreme court ruling. That decision is not binding on any other state. Nor does the Supreme Court not taking the case up make it precedent nationwide.
It merely means that Ms Carter had to serve a term locked up, and the Supreme Court did not address the issue that time. No more, no less.
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Yes, yes, there was no explicit ruling, however by letting the lower Court ruling stand, they signal they would not have overturned had they heard the case.
Incitement to illegal Acts is already Supreme Court precedent when it comes to unprotected speech.
The Supreme Court tacitly allowed Massachusetts to extend ‘illegal acts’ to include suicide.
Synonym of illusion: theater.
Yep, security theater strikes again.
God, but I wish we could resurrect our Founding Fathers, and turn them loose on our current crop of loony-bin escapees.
This information is on every Wikipedia article about every judge and justice as part of standard encyclopedic information. Would Wikipedia have to remove this information and then suppress it? That seems wild.
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