The Supreme Court

[simple schoolboy]

SCOTUS shoots down 9th Circuit ruling on Covid restrictions that specifically target religious orgs.

I thought the last ruling that went this way was pretty clear. You can effectively target religious orgs by going after seating capacity of all the churches in your area and ban them from holding meetings so long as seating capacity is the target, and not the religious function of the building. Unless you're a lapsed pentacostal who believes the presence of the holy spirit spreads the Rona, in which case good luck.

Slate getting its panties in a knot... you must wonder what other Amendments get short shrift in their book.

[simple schoolboy]

Inshallah

[4/5]

I'm more interested in the free speech in schools case.

[96583UP]

so are they gonna pack this sh1t or what

[simple schoolboy]

I'm more interested in the free speech in schools case.

That also sounds fun. Link?

[4/5]

I'm more interested in the free speech in schools case.

That also sounds fun. Link?

Here you go.

When a ninth grader at a Pennsylvania high school discovered one Saturday that she didn't make the varsity cheerleading team and would remain on the junior varsity squad, she lashed out the way her peers often do — on social media.

What happened next is the subject of a case the Supreme Court will hear Wednesday involving the free speech rights of students nationwide.

Brandi Levy responded to the rejection by taking a photo of herself and a friend at a convenience store with their middle fingers raised. She repeatedly used a vulgar four-letter verb to write, "f--- school f--- softball f--- cheer f--- everything." She posted that message on Snapchat to 250 friends and assumed it would vanish, like any post on that site, within 24 hours.

But another student found out about the message, took a screenshot and showed it to her mother, who happened to be one of the school's two cheerleading coaches. Brandi was suspended from the junior varsity team for her entire sophomore year.

She and her parents sued, and a federal appeals court ruled that because her message was posted off campus, she was beyond the reach of school authorities and for that reason could not be punished.


The school says the spread of smartphones, social media and the need for remote learning prompted by the Covid-19 pandemic have blurred the line between on and off campus.

"Wherever student speech originates, schools should be able to treat students alike when their speech is directed at the school" and causes disruption, the district told the Supreme Court it is filings.

The prevalence of social media, the district said, "has made it far easier for students' off-campus messages to instantly reach a wide audience of classmates and dominate the on-campus environment."

"School administrators must be able to discipline off-campus speech that threatens harm to the school environment — including speech that bullies or harasses students or staff or concerns potential on-campus violence," it said.

The Biden administration is siding with the school district. The Department of Justice said the court's previous cases on school speech dealt with the effects of a message on other students and school activities, not on the time or place where the messages were expressed.

But the American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania, representing the Levys, said young people "have the right to find their voices without being unduly chilled." Off campus, "government may not penalize speech because listeners find it offensive or even disagreeable."

Bullying, harassment and making threats are not protected forms of expression, the ACLU said, so a victory for Brandi would not diminish a school's authority to deal with those kinds of messages.

Louisiana and seven other states agree. They told the court that a ruling in favor of the school district would impose even more of a burden on educators already forced to serve as the never-off-duty police of students.

"This untenable position results in schools either unconstitutionally chilling their students’ speech or facing an uproar, often in the form of a lawsuit, for failing to regulate it," they said.

Brandi's father, Larry Levy, said he hopes the court keeps off-campus speech off-limits, for the sake of free expression. Besides, he said in an interview, "that's how parents learn about what's going on in our children's lives, through social media."

The Supreme Court will issue its ruling by late June.

So this is the Court's first school speech case since 2007 and looks to be a major one about whether schools can hold students accountable for speech that doesn't take place in school or under school supervision.

[B]

Why would the school think they have the right to punish that girl for that post? Fuck that school. Fuck softball. Fuck cheer. Fuck everything!

[B]

https://www.fivefourpod.com/

5-4 is a podcast about how much the Supreme Court sucks.

[McParadigm]

Right before the midterms, no less.

[4/5]

I haven't read anything yet but my first thought is wondering why this is the law/case they chose. There are other states that have passed even stricter bans than this one. I wonder if that means anything or if this was merely the first one to arrive with a case and it's just the first in a cluster of cases that will be condensed into a single one over the issue more broadly.

[96583UP]

i thought the dems were gonna pack the court

now seems like it would be a good time to do that

[Green Habit]

It's June, so activity here should start to ramp up. Pretty boring today, which was good since I was on the road when they issues orders and opinions, but I'm sure there will be plenty more to come.

[Green Habit]

I'm more interested in the free speech in schools case.

Me too, and I'm expected to be disappointed. I'm just hoping that no one else joins Thomas's batshit "minors don't have any First Amendment rights" argument.

[Green Habit]

I haven't read anything yet but my first thought is wondering why this is the law/case they chose. There are other states that have passed even stricter bans than this one. I wonder if that means anything or if this was merely the first one to arrive with a case and it's just the first in a cluster of cases that will be condensed into a single one over the issue more broadly.

Yeah, probably the first one since the median justice moved to the right of Roberts.

[4/5]

Welcome back, Nick! It's been too long.

[Green Habit]

Welcome back, Nick! It's been too long.

Thanks. Good to see you're still here, I feel like we need to catch up on a lot of high level US government discussions like we used to.

[4/5]

Welcome back, Nick! It's been too long.

Thanks. Good to see you're still here, I feel like we need to catch up on a lot of high level US government discussions like we used to.

Those threads where I would write up a question and you'd give a detailed response and I'd say, I agree with most of that but I'm not sure about that one thing. And then you'd expand on that and I'd say, yeah you're probably right.

I've even been thinking more lately about your Supreme Court term length idea and am even starting to come around on it lol.

[Green Habit]

Welcome back, Nick! It's been too long.

Thanks. Good to see you're still here, I feel like we need to catch up on a lot of high level US government discussions like we used to.

Those threads where I would write up a question and you'd give a detailed response and I'd say, I agree with most of that but I'm not sure about that one thing. And then you'd expand on that and I'd say, yeah you're probably right.

I've even been thinking more lately about your Supreme Court term length idea and am even starting to come around on it lol.

Given the current alignment of SCOTUS, I'm guessing that ship has sailed and won't be back for a while. If there's any change in the near term, it would likely be either court packing or "John Roberts has made his ruling, now let him enforce it".

[Green Habit]

SCOTUS punts with the "no standing" play call on the latest ACA challenge. Alito and Gorsuch dissent.

https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/2 ... 0_6jfm.pdf

[Green Habit]

And here's Fulton v. Philadelphia. The opinion of the Court held that Philly violated the Free Exercise Clause, but said it fell outside of the scope of Employment Division v. Smith, keeping it as precedent. But Alito, Thomas, and Gorsuch only concur in the judgment and want to overturn Smith. Alito's dissent is 77(!) pages long, as opposed to 15 for the Court's opinion.

https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/2 ... 3_g3bi.pdf