SCOTUS: No longer content with stacking, they're now dealing from the bottom of the deck

[PleaseBlitz]

1 minute ago, PokerPacker said:

Assuming you can identify the actor.

 

Yes, that's a good point.  I guess I was thinking he'd be pretty easily identifiable.

 

1 minute ago, tshile said:

Did they say that? 

 

Here is the issue boiled down by the Supreme Court experts at ScotusBlog.

 

Issue: Whether the First Amendment and this court’s decision in NAACP v. Claiborne Hardware Co. foreclose a state law negligence action making a leader of a protest demonstration personally liable in damages for injuries inflicted by an unidentified person’s violent act, when it is undisputed that the leader neither authorized, directed, nor ratified the perpetrator’s act, nor engaged in or intended violence of any kind.

 

 

If you want to assume facts like the protest was somehow unlawful, you're going to have to provide some justification for that assumption.  

[tshile]

58 minutes ago, PleaseBlitz said:

If you want to assume facts like the protest was somehow unlawful, you're going to have to provide some justification for that assumption

From SCOTUS blog article …

 

Quote

At issue in Mckesson was whether DeRay Mckesson can be held responsible for the officer’s injuries when he did not directly harm the officer himself but instead organized the demonstration and, the officer said, “knew or should have known” that violence would result.

 

Quote

After the Louisiana Supreme Court issued an opinion indicating that, under the facts alleged by the officer, a protest leader could be sued for negligence, a divided 5th Circuit issued a new opinion allowing the lawsuit to go forward. Doe had alleged, the majority wrote, that Mckesson had “organized and directed the protest in such a manner as to create an unreasonable risk that one protester would assault or batter” the officer.

idk it seems to be saying exactly what I’m saying. 
 

I don’t know how those southern states work but around here we have rules for doing things lawfully, and it mostly coincides with doing things safely

 

theyre saying he didn’t do it safely. Maybe they don’t need permits. But unless I’m missing something (you haven’t pointed to anything yet) then you and the article are like the ones claiming that now parents will go to prison if their kid steals a candy bar

 

🤷‍♂️ 

[Larry]

3 hours ago, China said:

The Supreme Court effectively abolishes the right to mass protest in three US states

 

The Supreme Court announced on Monday that it will not hear Mckesson v. Doe. The decision not to hear Mckesson leaves in place a lower court decision that effectively eliminated the right to organize a mass protest in the states of Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas.

 

Under that lower court decision, a protest organizer faces potentially ruinous financial consequences if a single attendee at a mass protest commits an illegal act.

 

It is possible that this outcome will be temporary. The Court did not embrace the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit’s decision attacking the First Amendment right to protest, but it did not reverse it either. That means that, at least for now, the Fifth Circuit’s decision is the law in much of the American South.

 

For the past several years, the Fifth Circuit has engaged in a crusade against DeRay Mckesson, a prominent figure within the Black Lives Matter movement who organized a protest near a Baton Rouge police station in 2016.

 

The facts of the Mckesson case are, unfortunately, quite tragic. Mckesson helped organize the Baton Rouge protest following the fatal police shooting of Alton Sterling. During that protest, an unknown individual threw a rock or similar object at a police officer, the plaintiff in the Mckesson case who is identified only as “Officer John Doe.” Sadly, the officer was struck in the face and, according to one court, suffered “injuries to his teeth, jaw, brain, and head.”

 

Everyone agrees that this rock was not thrown by Mckesson, however. And the Supreme Court held in NAACP v. Claiborne Hardware (1982) that protest leaders cannot be held liable for the violent actions of a protest participant, absent unusual circumstances that are not present in the Mckesson case — such as if Mckesson had “authorized, directed, or ratified” the decision to throw the rock.

 

Indeed, as Justice Sonia Sotomayor points out in a brief opinion accompanying the Court’s decision not to hear Mckesson, the Court recently reaffirmed the strong First Amendment protections enjoyed by people like Mckesson in Counterman v. Colorado (2023). That decision held that the First Amendment “precludes punishment” for inciting violent action “unless the speaker’s words were ‘intended’ (not just likely) to produce imminent disorder.”

 

The reason Claiborne protects protest organizers should be obvious. No one who organizes a mass event attended by thousands of people can possibly control the actions of all those attendees, regardless of whether the event is a political protest, a music concert, or the Super Bowl. So, if protest organizers can be sanctioned for the illegal action of any protest attendee, no one in their right mind would ever organize a political protest again.

 

Click on the link for the full article

 

Interesting.  

 

So, the Supreme Court has said that they're cool with holding a person who organizes a protest liable for what the attendees of said protest, do.  

 

That might be of considerable interest, to a former President.  

 

[The Evil Genius]

 

[China]

What the Supreme Court case on tent encampments could mean for homeless people

 

On Monday, the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments for the most consequential case in decades concerning the rights of people experiencing homelessness.

 

In Grants Pass v. Johnson, the Supreme Court will decide whether it constitutes cruel and unusual punishment to fine, ticket, or jail someone for sleeping outside on public property if they have nowhere else to go. A ruling in favor of the plaintiffs would make it easier for communities to clear out homeless people’s tent encampments, even if no available housing or shelter exists.

 

Over 650,000 people in America experience homelessness on any given night, and roughly 40 percent of those individuals are sleeping outside on the streets, in cars, parks, train stations, and other settings not designed primarily for human residence. Federal data published in late 2023 shows a rise in homelessness in most states.

 

In two major decisions over the last six years, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals held that criminalizing homelessness when a city lacks adequate shelter or housing violates the Eighth Amendment of the US Constitution. But amid a worsening homelessness crisis, government leaders have pressed the Supreme Court to reconsider, arguing those earlier rulings were incorrectly decided and left them unable to safely manage their communities.

 

“The Ninth Circuit and respondents have tried to downplay the ways in which the ruling ties local leaders’ hands, but their arguments only confirm the decision’s ambiguity and unworkability,” Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom wrote in an amicus brief filed in September.

 

Click on the link for the full article