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Protesting Homes of SC Justices: Free Speech or Intimidation?
We all know that people have been protesting outside of the homes of originalist Justices since the Dobbs decision was leaked. We also know that this is against a Federal law designed to stop the intimidation of the Justices and Judges on the bench. Today I saw this thread:
The act of protesting outside the private homes of SCOTUS justices is rooted in intimidation.
The message is ‘we know where you and your family live.’ And these illegal protests are restarting just ahead of the end of the term when the majority of opinions will be released. https://t.co/6iTNsS3hmY
— Carrie Severino (@JCNSeverino) May 15, 2023
Mr. Hurley puts forth a defense that enforcing such a law would abridge the free speech rights of the protesters. He then finds some left and libertarians who agree and quotes them. One, the libertarian, argues that:
Legal scholars from across the ideological spectrum seem to agree that there are potentially free speech issues, notwithstanding a 1965 Supreme Court ruling that upheld a similar law.
Here's how Thomas Berry from the libertarian Cato Institute put it: pic.twitter.com/YQk3U9B506
— Lawrence Hurley (@lawrencehurley) May 14, 2023
Ahh, so, protesting at the house of a Justice is not different from publishing an op-ed in a newspaper. Since one is legal, both should be. Ms. Severino correctly notes that the law is designed to stop intimidating Judges and Justices. This makes sense. Publishing an op-ed is expressing one’s opinion in the public square. Picketing their home is very different. Picketing their place of work begins to encroach on intimidation, but has long been allowed because those locations are public squares.
But it does beg the question, if it isn’t intimidating to protest at the work or home of Judges and Justices, then why does the FACE act exist? After all, protesting a policy one doesn’t agree with is a freedom of speech issue. Therefore passing a law that claims that is intimidation seems to violate that same concept. Alas, the govt seems to care much more about ensuring that women should be able to obtain an abortion than that Justices (only the originalist ones) be intimidated.
Published in Law
This.
More and more I’m realizing that the rule of law is meaningless to the Left, unless it works for them.
Typical Democrat (commie) corruption of the rule of law–protect the commies while punishing (or ignore crimes against) fellow travelers. People vote for this crap, because they are truly stupid.
Of course it’s intimidation. The protestors and those supporting these protests at the justice’s homes are the same people who call parents who go to local school board meetings to complain about COVID policies or the neo-racism being taught or the sexualization of children in the school “terrorists” and urge the FBI to treat them as such. For the Left free speech only goes in direction.
From time to time we get an elected Democrat like Sinema or Gabbard who suddenly realizes that they are joined with a group of radicals whose majority of members rarely act with any consistency beyond their Leftist ideology and that this behavior is in great conflict with American tradition and the oaths they have taken.
If there’re others we need to uncover and free them.
I got questions for the people to which Mr. Hurley links.
One says the protesters weren’t trying to intimidate the justices because the justices weren’t going to change their minds. Well then, what was the point of the protests? Do you often spend your time and energy on futile activities that won’t make any difference?
Another claims there may be some attempt to broadly restrict commentary on the court’s activities. But the key part of the statute the protesters are violating is the time, place, and manner restriction. Courts have often permitting restrictions on speech provided the restrictions are very narrow, very specific, and have an obvious connection to protecting some other value. I seem to recall a lot of insistence two and a half years ago that the speech of certain people be restricted and those people be arrested when those people who had something to say about a presidential election and acted to say so in a particular government building.
I forget which columnist I read it from many years ago, but he or she said the Left claims love of the system when they are the minority until they gain power and then all they care about is maintaining power.
They don’t hide their conviction that rules are different for “the oppressed” and “the oppressors”. They’re quite open about it.
The heck about justices. Nobody should be protested at their homes. Judges, police, politicians, employees, individuals. Why this is acceptable baffles me. It is obviously a method of threatening people and their families and friends.
What about trespassing on private property? The police should be called and they should be charged. The neighbors should demand it.
Agree with this 100%. There are plenty of spaces beyond anyone’s residence for any aggrieved party to air their issue(s).
I agree, and I suspect that if pro-life and pro-Second Amendment activists had staged recurring protests outside the home of Ruth Bader Ginsburg we wouldn’t be hearing theses same people calling it freedom of speech.
Not an issue if they stay on the sidewalk or in the street.
true, though if enough of them are in the street, that can be blocking traffic.
Agreed 100%. There should be no right to protest someone’s home, I don’t care who they are.
Just like the Freedom Convoy.
I believe my right to live peacefully in my own home overrides any “right” protesters have to demonstrate outside it . . .
Exactly
Still illegal.
MLK Jr went to jail.
Quite often recently, the Dems do play by the rules. But they do this only after they have inserted their new definitions or after they manage to bring about a new rearrangement of the law. Then they are then fine with the law as they have re-written it.
In the recent Proud Boy show trial, the prosecuting attorney stated that according to his take on things, an individual involved in a conspiracy need not have suggested either a plan or a goal.
So what is a conspiracy then? Any and everything, I guess.
What’s next? Decreeing that a murder charge can arise, even if no one is missing, and there has been no death?
Also in order to prosecute in Civil Court the recent ridiculous assertions by E Jean Carroll against Trump, the court and political system in NY saw to it that the old standard as far as statute of limitations was revised. Otherwise Carroll’s situation would be too old a case to be taken up in court.
This is at least as bad as the Dems ignoring the law – when they slice and dice the law to meet with their requirements.
It’s because they are shiw trials about producing a political result as opposed to justice. It’s almost like none of them payed attention in history class to how the Soviets worked. They’ll get their turn in the hole soon enough.
Perhaps we should get a few dozen folks to set up a protest watches at the homes of the liberal justices, just to even the playing field, and see if they can call the hounds off. If the protestors don’t listen to the lefty justices to stop the not so subtle intimidation, then they should cast a few opinions that concur with the majority until they all go home.
I like the idea.
From a Corporate media point of view, it depends. Protest outside of Sotomayor’s home, it will be intimidation, protest outside of Clarence Thomas’s – you are hero.
Yes. We should demand that they vote to rein in the administrative state in the Loper case.
That depends. Your papers, please.
Frankly, it seems to me that there is a good SCOTUS case in this. Well maybe not. Seems to me that the law at the time is the basis for hazarding the liberty of the accused. This is different from currently honoring new laws about evidence and process — the statute of limitations seems a different level of hazard.
In particular, since the (prosecutor? lawyer? somebody) who both worked to get the law changed and brought / helped bring the case against Trump has clearly indicated that the former efforts were aimed at this case in particular, this smells a lot like attainder.
So, what´s to prevent some enterprising conservatives from staging recurring protests outside the homes of Sotomayor and Kagan right now? I mean, aside from decency, wisdom, love of country, respect for the rule of law, ethics, all those things the left does not have.
Yeah, we know that. The point is we have to stop giving a flying purple rat´s kiester how the media view and depict us.
USSS, FBI, DHS, state, county and local police, Army, Guard and State Guard, and lawless thugs who will bike-lock your ass into an early grave, who will either never be prosecuted, or will be let off with a slap.
Curious, what if I sat in my car outside someone’s home and played talk radio really loud using amplified speakers? Surely that would be ‘free speech’.