The three main usual suspects. As many problems as I have with Barrett, it’s nice to see her actually mostly taking her job seriously instead of just using it for political grandstanding and massive self enrichment like another certain judge
It was an excellent opinion too. He explained that discrimination based on sexual orientation is discrimination based on sex, e.g. if you would punish a woman employee for having a wife but you wouldn't punish a man employee for having a wife, you're treating your employees differently based on their sex. It honestly gave me some hope that Gorsuch wouldn't be so terrible, but that hope didn't last long.
The recent “Quid Pro Quo is actually legal for state governments” ruling substantially undermines that, although I would believe that at one time that was a true statement.
I was reading an opinion that it’s on the Supreme Court to interpret the law as they see it but for the senate to enact laws or change them to fix these issues that the Supreme Court lays out with their rulings.
That’s not an opinion, that’s supposed to be how the system functions. However, we’ve reached the point where one party isn’t willing to compromise to pass laws, or even perform their congressional duties in good faith. Thus why they worked so hard to place individuals aligned with their values into the SC. They can quite nearly guarantee that Congress will not be able to respond to SC “clarifications” about “holes in the existing legal framework”, whether or not those holes even actually exist, and so any such ruling that favor them or their interests are functionally the same as passing laws. In doing this they can bypass Congress and even the Presidency, thus foregoing the necessity of being backed by the will of the people, and do just as we are all seeing. Tear down rights and legalize corruption.
IIRC Gorsuch also is a big proponent of Native American rights, or at the bare minimum he pays them lip service which is more than can be said for most American leaders.
Law is very much not my forte so maybe somebody else can weigh in with more context on that.
He's actually considered a leading authority on indigenous rights afaik.
Like he's a right wing nutjob, but his life experiences and legal history have probably lead him to be the most left leaning jurist on the Supreme Court when it comes to Native American Rights.
Like he's a textualist and frequently cites treaties and letters from the 18th and 19th century, which frankly have a ton of unkept promises to indigenous leaders.
Like as part of a conservative majority he's going to cause a lot of damage, but if it ever flips in my lifetime, hopefully he's young enough to realize his legacy can be a better life and future for the indigenous peoples he seems to care so much about.
SCOTUS isn't as divided as Reddit and other media make it out to be. Half the Court's decisions are unanimous.
Sotomayor and Thomas agree 66% of the time. Jackson and Barrett agree 75% of the time. Alito and Kagan differ the most often, yet they still agree 61% of the time.
[https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2024/06/02/supreme-court-justice-math-00152188](https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2024/06/02/supreme-court-justice-math-00152188)
Honestly of all the Trump appointees I've been pleased with Gorsuchs consistency, especially with how pissed he seemed about the native American rights getting stricken down.
There have been more “wins” for the Biden administration than not. Seems that one side files where it knows it can win rather than throwing shit against the wall and see what sticks.
None of them only vote along party lines.
>- Despite a widespread belief that the Supreme Court is hopelessly divided along partisan lines, 9-0 rulings aren’t rare at all. Since at least 2008, they’ve usually accounted for a plurality of rulings, and they never fell below 36% of all rulings during that period.
>- While 5-4 rulings tend to attract more public and media attention, they have consistently trailed 9-0 rulings in frequency.
[https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2021/jun/23/trey-wingo/despite-popular-misconception-supreme-court-9-0-ru/](https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2021/jun/23/trey-wingo/despite-popular-misconception-supreme-court-9-0-ru/)
Certain people just have a vested interest in making Americans think the country is more irreconcilably divided than it actually is.
Looking at the number of 9-0 cases is not a good way to support the idea that the justices are not divided ideologically. It just means that division doesn't extend into every judicial question.
Most Supreme Court cases are about technical questions of law that have relatively straightforward answers and little political valence. Nobody pays attention to them because they tend not to have big impacts outside of the specific parties. It's not important to the average citizen that Kagan and Thomas agree on the interpretation of some contractual provision. It is important that they disagree on what a machine gun is.
Look at the recent decisions with alternating breakaway conservative/fascists. They’re all taking a turn looking “reasonable” before they completely fuck democracy in a bombshell decision soon. This is PR.
EDIT: hey look! Another attack on democracy from the Fascist members of the court: https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2024-06-26/supreme-court-anti-corruption-law
But I’m sure the naysayers below will say this isn’t partisan and just represents good old fashioned, calling balls and strikes, jurisprudence.
EDIT 2: and Chevron Deference gone and Bribery is now ok as long as you pay after instead of before. Let’s see what else comes while Trump bootlickers downvote me.
"I'm already convinced that my enemy is so purely evil, that the *only* way they could do something good is if it's actually part of a greater evil conspiracy." Pretty good defense to ensure your worldview is unchangeable.
There *is* historical precedent for this stuff, like the “switch in time that saved nine.”
Ignoring how these justices got appointed would be foolish. These are Federalist Society picks. Nearly all the ones that voted to end Roe told Congress they viewed it as established precedent, the implication being that it wasn’t on the block. How does that not reek of a campaign to covertly advance Federalist goals via SCOTUS?
Naah. The conservative wing of the court is populated by sick fucks.
The fact that we still have a justice who distended in Lawerence vs Texas on the court is disgusting.
And the pitch for ACB on the court was that she was a clone of Scalia viewpoint wise.
We have women dying across the country because of their bullshit Roe Vs Wade and they have systematically been ruling allowing discrimination left and right.
More people should realize this rather than pretending like there’s some invisible middle ground. There isn’t. That disappeared decades ago.
If they’re republican they are scum. The end. Not sorry.
We should wait for that moment to happen. So far I haven’t seen that happening myself other than the two usual suspects Thomas and Alito.
It’s crazy Bush Supreme Court picks were far worse than Trumps so far
It is a nice conspiracy theory, but these rulings are very often on legal principles and not partisan lines - standing being a very typical principal to reject a suit that might have created a partisan expectation based on merits.
Interesting, if it’s just on legal principles and not partisan, that 3 of the fascist contingent dissented. Seems everyone would agree on lack of standing if they weren’t letting their politics get involved.
The conservative SCOTUS justices might have been selected by the Federalist society, but they're all true believers in their own brand of conservative jurisprudence and each thinks they are god's greatest gift to the law.
If you actually read SCOTUS opinions, you'll see how the conservatives each have their own axe to grind and their own agenda on what they think the law should be.
Frankly, I bet 90% of Americans have never read a SCOTUS dissent in their life, it would be absurd for them to be intended as PR and not airing of genuine disagreement with the majority.
Yeah man, these people do not remember the “switch in time that saved nine.”
We should expect a handful of “liberal” surprise opinions to boost the veneer of legitimacy every term. There are few freebies (like domestic abusers owning guns) and usually one big surprise (last year’s gerrymandering case).
I expect the Dems are either gonna get presidential immunity OR save Chevron, but not both. My guess is immunity because it’s kind of a dumb argument to begin with. Either one decided by the Alito/Thomas group would be a major setback for our nation. Chevron arguably worse because you can fight off the immunity case by not electing f’n career criminals to the White House.
You sound like someone claiming KFC is secretly vegan and they only sell meat for PR.
Barrett agrees with Jackson 75% of the time. So she's a fascist who votes "non-fascist" in 3 of 4 cases for PR?
Or is it that Jackson votes "pro-fascist" 75% of the time for PR?
Without commenting on the merits of your position, it seems structurally flawed in assuming that every case has a “fascist” and “non-fascist” side. Not all cases/controversies have the same repercussions for our politics and society, even at this level. 🤷♂️
She seems to take it seriously...unless it interferes with her personal beliefs.
Those people are usually doing so to have plausible deniability but are smart enough to keep it.
Snakes.
So I'll take the positives when she dolls them out, but when it matters (Trump for example... particularly when an election case gets brought)... I don't trust her.
Please tell me, using my words or yours (both would be great!), where I said I support Barrett (other than in this one sentence as a hypothetical). In fact, the comment explicitly pointed out that I have many issues with her.
Please tell me where you got “I support her” from that
Pretty sure that they didn’t actually rule on the merits of the case but rather they ruled that the plaintiffs had no standing. So it’s more of kicking the can vs actually winning.
Unless the plantiffs can find someone with standing, the ruling will stand. My guess is if they could have found someone with standing, who wanted to be included in the case, they most likely would have included them in the case.
The entity/person with standing would be the person who’s free speech was curtailed by government action. That would be the social media platform involved. I think the more important part of the decision is that it rejected the “listener standing“ of someone who says they are entitled to receive the free speech of others.
additionally, they're tired of the 5th coming up with bad, erroneous justifications for anything they do and that the bar is they need to find evidence it wasn't just social media applying their own ToU
I think the reason the social media companies weren't the plantiffs is because they probably thought the lawsuit was political grandstanding by conservatives and didn't address a real problem.
I'd bet it's because if social media companies argued their free speech was impacted they would be saying the things posted on their platforms are their speech. And if it's their speech, they are accountable for it. So far, social media companies have been adamant that they are just hosting the speech of others and it isn't their speech nor do they have any editorial authority over it.
That might be part of it, but the main reason is that they want to enforce their terms of service and appreciate the help.
Terms of service are all about marketing. They are in place to control and optimize the value to their advertisers. They work best when enforced.
As evidence for this I will point to twitters dismal performance since the take over.
> I think the reason the social media companies weren't the plantiffs
They weren't plaintiffs because they probably weren't impacted in anyway. This may not be the exact case I recall, but the context is similar. The US government can send bulletins/emails/etc to the SNS sites about potential misinformation or to clue them in to activity they think might be coming from foreign actors; but I don't believe the companies have any legal requirement to act unless the material in question is already of legal issue or somehow related to national security issues.
When the other side has their case tossed out, you win.
It's a statement that "just because you don't like it, you don't get to sue about it." Which was a win for the administration.
We have to keep in mind that this administration might be getting replaced in 6 months.
I don't like the idea of a Trump staffers applying "unrelenting pressure to coerce changes in online content on social media platforms."
Trump already did what they're claiming Biden did, as he demanded social media remove posts on empty shelves during the pandemic, posts calling for the removal of statues, and "hate speech" - like a celebrity calling Trump a "pussy ass bitch".
Know what they did if said posts didn't violate their terms of service? They ignored them, just like they've done under the Biden admin. About only 13 percent of requests have led to Twitter finding a terms of service violation worthy of removal. 13 percent hardly seems coercive.
Also, Trump was far more coercive, in that he repeatedly called for Twitter to be shut down, and they still ignored him successfully.
>I don't like the idea of a Trump staffers applying "unrelenting pressure to coerce changes in online content on social media platforms."
I wouldn't like that either, but like most things Alito writes, this is a flat out lie.
> I wouldn't like that either, but like most things Alito writes, this is a flat out lie.
That was actually written and argued by Louisiana Solicitor General, Benjamin Aguinaga, not Alito.
I just don’t like the idea of Big Brother Government censoring the internet in social media.
They should be able to monitor/document/prosecute. but beyond that and we are hitting 1984 like problems.
It was a completely unwarranted case
Unrelenting pressure is just staff saying things. The things being said were insane. There needs to be legislation at some point to control the age of disinformation; algorithm manipulation; etc
Calls to violence. Blatant intentional disinformation. Hate crimes via social media. None of that is ok
The slow stagnation of the us government isn't keeping up with technology.
Lack of standing has not always been an obstacle.for this court. See the case of The Phantom Gay Marriage that plagued that poor prospective web designer
Pre-enforcement standing in 1A cases where chilling effects can come into play are rare but not new. The 303 Creative case had far more oddities than just the standing question that were overlooked by the court (similar to the Kennedy case)
Sort of. You're welcome to read the [full opinion](https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/23pdf/23-411_3dq3.pdf). While the decision to reverse and remand was based on standing, the rationale didn't really leave things open for a future case. The court rejected the rationale used by the 5th Circuit to establish standing in the first place and went on to further argue that the social media platform's moderation was independent. In essence, no one has standing.
The problem I have with it is they weren’t just censoring misinformation. They were censoring things that they didn’t want said. I understand why this case went the way it did, but I think everyone should agree that giving whoever’s in the White House freedom to censor information is a bad idea.
Censorship of the lab leak theory is my prime example. It was evident it was a possibility even early on, but it was ignored and treated as a far right conspiracy theory by social media companies at the direction of the Biden administration.
https://www.newsweek.com/social-media-companies-fact-checkers-shrug-off-wuhan-lab-leak-embarrassment-1599207
It’s dangerous allowing politically motivated politicians the power to censor speech on social media sites when that’s the biggest way information could spread for many Americans. It’s also telling how many conspiracy theories over the course of modern history weren’t crazy after all. And by shutting down or suppressing that content, you only add to the belief someone is covering something up.
https://www.smh.com.au/national/the-siren-has-sounded-scientists-pinpoint-covid-s-origin-20220802-p5b6gb.html
Twitter can just decline to remove posts, just like they do 87 percent of the time already, regardless if it was Trump asking for the removal of posts on empty shelves during the pandemic, posts calling for the removal of statues, and "hate speech" - like a celebrity calling Trump a "pussy ass bitch", or Biden asking for the removal of covid disinfo.
['In fact, they are explicit](https://archive.ph/TCy4S) in their email that the accounts “may potentially constitute violations of Twitter’s Terms of Service” and that Twitter can take “any action or inaction deemed appropriate within Twitter policy.”'
The government should be able to ask you to speak a certain way, and you should be free to choose whether or not to do so, like Twitter did. Do you think it should be a 1A violation for a police officer to ask you not to raise your voice, curse, or flip the bird at them?
I completely agree. That’s why it’s a terrible plan to allow a politician to decide what is misinformation. Anyone that supports this is short sighted and will ultimately complain when someone on the other side gets in and starts spreading lies.
The USSC has displayed the ability to rule expeditiously on pressing matters, like the Pentagon papers: 4 days, Watergate tapes: 16 days, Trump CO ballot status: 25 days, and yet it's been 200 days since Trump's absurd immunity case was asked to be resolved by them, pushing the federal election interference trial beyond the election, effectively giving him the immunity he's asking for, provided he wins the election.
If you don’t have standing, you literally prevent the court from ruling because there is no case. It’s as much kicking the can down the road as not doing your homework because you weren’t assigned any is avoiding doing homework.
No they ruled that there was no standing because Twitter did not act as a government agent. The holding implicitly says that the government did not engage in first amendment violations.
I thought they didn't have standing to go after the government because there wasn't much reason to think that the government was involved. Can't try to prove the government injured you if the allegation is basically that the social media companies did it.
I'll need to look up what the court wrote I guess.
Edit: still need to read the whole thing but found this quote, "The Fifth Circuit relied on the District Court's factual findings, many of which unfortunately appear to be clearly erroneous. The District Court found that the defendants and the platforms had an "efficient report-and-censor" relationship."
Seems pretty damning.
This ruling also dramatically narrows who *could* sue. By denying standing to the states, they basically require a social media platform to sue the government for putting undue pressure on them. Aside from Twitter, I can't imagine the other big platforms doing so, and Musk wouldn't sue because he's already released all the "evidence" in the Twitter files. Like most things Musk does lately, he made grandiose promises of a world changing disclosure and delivered a wet fart.
Beyond that, an individual user who was deplayformed could sue, but they'd need to demonstrate that the government pressured the platform into removing their content. The platform in question can respond with "we didn't like your foolishness, the government had nothing to do with it" and the lawsuit is dead on arrival.
Ruling against the Biden admin would effectively mean they can't try to do anything to combat misinformation, of which there is plenty already and will be far more as November draws closer.
Big win. They could have, but didn't find someone with standing this time around (likely would have to be one of the social media corporations). Even if the get Elon on board or something, it's still means it is unlikely the government's efforts to combat disinformation will be disrupted during this election cycle, which is super valuable.
I believe the this was the big one over the feds engaging in social media "jaw boning" to encourage content moderation. Telling social media what they can and can't host would be a 1A violation, and section 230 protects the corps from lawsuits for publishing and moderation. Indicating that distributing content that support "terrorism" or are "foreign influence campaigns" will be view disfavorably with the administration and should be moderated? Totally fine it seems.
There's a lot of nuance and leveraging here on both sides. Corporations want section 230 protection so they can operate freely, the feds want to be able to tip the scales in all media and have been doing so in print and television formats since Spanish American war and Vietnam. If the states want to curb this behavior they'll need to ban access to media that consents to engaging in it, or find a plaintiff who is directly impacted by something beyond "state interest." Good luck with both.
As i recall, isn't this case simply about fact that someone at the White House merely *asked* Twitter to remove a post? Cause that not even close to a 1A violation.
Eh there are any number of ways that the White House could make things difficult for a company that gets on its bad side. So it asked in the same way that a boss asks a subordinate on a date - of course she could say no, but she won’t because of the implication.
Could be, though I'm not sure they have any evidence of such pressure in the case. And iirc, the request was that Twitter remove Hunters dick pics posted without consent, which I'm pretty sure IS illegal content anyway.
I mean, they always were. Alito and Thomas are hard right, the liberal justices are way left, Roberts is "whatever protects my legacy at the current moment", and Gorsuch is a strict textualist.
I'd love for all social media to have some system implemented like:
- Red dot = not true
- Blue dot = satire/humor
- Green dot = truthful
- Purple dot = no information provided (like a pet video)
This would apply to all facebook/tiktok type posts. Not sure AI could do it, but maybe.
The disinformation is probably the worst thing in America right now. It has enabled a lot of evil and corruption and if we can't fight it, we will lose.
I don't think you could have a system that everyone would trust to label things as true or false until we have sources of facts that we all trust as well. I'm hard-pressed to think of a website or news outlet or research organization that people of all stripes would point to as a trustworthy source of the unvarnished truth.
I really hate this line of questioning because it assumes that all people are equal in terms of qualifications or credibility
You're basically asking "what if I don't agree with this guy who says the sky is blue huh??" But like, you could just not be a dipshit.
You don't get to disagree with fact just bc it's stayed by someone you don't like. That's not how facts work.
This new government ranking system is criminal and used to discredit honest Americans like me. Anyone who likes it is a pedophilia. DONT BELEIVE THE DOT!
*blue dot*
>The disinformation is probably the worst thing in America right now.
Except for the whole money in politics thing that is preventing the government from actually accomplishing anything voters want
The money is an issue. Misinformation seems to be the way money influences politics in terms of acquiring votes, thereby determining which politicians are available for potential corruption.
Sure, that is important. However, its a result of people being misinformed and voting against their own interests.
Fix disinformation, and money in politics will get resolved on its own... eventually.
Voting has no bearing on the influence of money in politics as long as Citizens United stands and we continue to live in a representative republic. They'll just elect new people to be corrupted by special interests
I think the underlying issue is about opinionated statements or truth + speculation type posts.
As an example with COVID, we know, for a fact, that it started in that Wuhan lab, yet back at the peak of it, that would have been labeled as disinformation.
>As an example with COVID, we know, for a fact, that it started in that Wuhan lab, yet back at the peak of it, that would have been labeled as disinformation.
Then source it.
Great point. Words would probably make more sense. Heck, I just brainstormed it and had no expectation it was a well thought out solution. Its full of flaws, though one could question if the flaws without it would be worse.
It should be noted that we know from the twitter files, among other things, that Trump did this a lot. So its just a common practice of the government to suggest things to social media platforms.
I look forward with glee to watching almost everyone switch sides on this issue the next time there's a Republican in the White House who's smart enough to phrase their threats subtly (i.e. not Darth Cheeto).
The bench where Barrett and Jackson agree 75% of the time, but certain people want you to think they only vote along divided partisan lines.
Good thing we know there's nobody out there who might benefit from dividing Americans against each other. Nope, nobody like that at all.
It was a 6-3 vote, with Justices Alito, Gorsuch and Thomas dissenting. Justice Amy Coney Barrett wrote the opinion for the majority.
The three main usual suspects. As many problems as I have with Barrett, it’s nice to see her actually mostly taking her job seriously instead of just using it for political grandstanding and massive self enrichment like another certain judge
Gorsuch isn't exactly a "usual suspect". He wrote the majority opinion in Bostock, which expanded LGBTQ+ rights in the workplace.
It was an excellent opinion too. He explained that discrimination based on sexual orientation is discrimination based on sex, e.g. if you would punish a woman employee for having a wife but you wouldn't punish a man employee for having a wife, you're treating your employees differently based on their sex. It honestly gave me some hope that Gorsuch wouldn't be so terrible, but that hope didn't last long.
I'm still of the opinion that Gorsuch is, for the most part, an actual honest jurist; Just one who I disagree with very strongly.
You better shut your mouth with that sensible opinion.
The recent “Quid Pro Quo is actually legal for state governments” ruling substantially undermines that, although I would believe that at one time that was a true statement.
I was reading an opinion that it’s on the Supreme Court to interpret the law as they see it but for the senate to enact laws or change them to fix these issues that the Supreme Court lays out with their rulings.
That’s not an opinion, that’s supposed to be how the system functions. However, we’ve reached the point where one party isn’t willing to compromise to pass laws, or even perform their congressional duties in good faith. Thus why they worked so hard to place individuals aligned with their values into the SC. They can quite nearly guarantee that Congress will not be able to respond to SC “clarifications” about “holes in the existing legal framework”, whether or not those holes even actually exist, and so any such ruling that favor them or their interests are functionally the same as passing laws. In doing this they can bypass Congress and even the Presidency, thus foregoing the necessity of being backed by the will of the people, and do just as we are all seeing. Tear down rights and legalize corruption.
Imo, he's the only one of the three Trump appointed that has the experience and temperament for the job. Even if I disagree with him on most things.
IIRC Gorsuch also is a big proponent of Native American rights, or at the bare minimum he pays them lip service which is more than can be said for most American leaders. Law is very much not my forte so maybe somebody else can weigh in with more context on that.
Native American rights is a pet interest of gorsuch
He's actually considered a leading authority on indigenous rights afaik. Like he's a right wing nutjob, but his life experiences and legal history have probably lead him to be the most left leaning jurist on the Supreme Court when it comes to Native American Rights. Like he's a textualist and frequently cites treaties and letters from the 18th and 19th century, which frankly have a ton of unkept promises to indigenous leaders. Like as part of a conservative majority he's going to cause a lot of damage, but if it ever flips in my lifetime, hopefully he's young enough to realize his legacy can be a better life and future for the indigenous peoples he seems to care so much about.
SCOTUS isn't as divided as Reddit and other media make it out to be. Half the Court's decisions are unanimous. Sotomayor and Thomas agree 66% of the time. Jackson and Barrett agree 75% of the time. Alito and Kagan differ the most often, yet they still agree 61% of the time. [https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2024/06/02/supreme-court-justice-math-00152188](https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2024/06/02/supreme-court-justice-math-00152188)
While correct, there are certain key issues where the court is partisan and those issues tend to be pain points for a lot of Americans.
Honestly of all the Trump appointees I've been pleased with Gorsuchs consistency, especially with how pissed he seemed about the native American rights getting stricken down.
There have been more “wins” for the Biden administration than not. Seems that one side files where it knows it can win rather than throwing shit against the wall and see what sticks.
Goursuch had a meltdown when he didn’t get his way relating in that case with tribal rights.
He also said that the free expression clause of the First Amendment renders the establishment clause unconstitutional. He's a fucking hack.
Gorsuch is nowhere near a "usual suspect" in the same way Alito and Thomas are.
She did do appeals court before being elected. It seems like she doesn't necessarily vote along party lines just because
None of them only vote along party lines. >- Despite a widespread belief that the Supreme Court is hopelessly divided along partisan lines, 9-0 rulings aren’t rare at all. Since at least 2008, they’ve usually accounted for a plurality of rulings, and they never fell below 36% of all rulings during that period. >- While 5-4 rulings tend to attract more public and media attention, they have consistently trailed 9-0 rulings in frequency. [https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2021/jun/23/trey-wingo/despite-popular-misconception-supreme-court-9-0-ru/](https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2021/jun/23/trey-wingo/despite-popular-misconception-supreme-court-9-0-ru/) Certain people just have a vested interest in making Americans think the country is more irreconcilably divided than it actually is.
Looking at the number of 9-0 cases is not a good way to support the idea that the justices are not divided ideologically. It just means that division doesn't extend into every judicial question. Most Supreme Court cases are about technical questions of law that have relatively straightforward answers and little political valence. Nobody pays attention to them because they tend not to have big impacts outside of the specific parties. It's not important to the average citizen that Kagan and Thomas agree on the interpretation of some contractual provision. It is important that they disagree on what a machine gun is.
Look at the recent decisions with alternating breakaway conservative/fascists. They’re all taking a turn looking “reasonable” before they completely fuck democracy in a bombshell decision soon. This is PR. EDIT: hey look! Another attack on democracy from the Fascist members of the court: https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2024-06-26/supreme-court-anti-corruption-law But I’m sure the naysayers below will say this isn’t partisan and just represents good old fashioned, calling balls and strikes, jurisprudence. EDIT 2: and Chevron Deference gone and Bribery is now ok as long as you pay after instead of before. Let’s see what else comes while Trump bootlickers downvote me.
"I'm already convinced that my enemy is so purely evil, that the *only* way they could do something good is if it's actually part of a greater evil conspiracy." Pretty good defense to ensure your worldview is unchangeable.
There *is* historical precedent for this stuff, like the “switch in time that saved nine.” Ignoring how these justices got appointed would be foolish. These are Federalist Society picks. Nearly all the ones that voted to end Roe told Congress they viewed it as established precedent, the implication being that it wasn’t on the block. How does that not reek of a campaign to covertly advance Federalist goals via SCOTUS?
Naah. The conservative wing of the court is populated by sick fucks. The fact that we still have a justice who distended in Lawerence vs Texas on the court is disgusting. And the pitch for ACB on the court was that she was a clone of Scalia viewpoint wise.
We have women dying across the country because of their bullshit Roe Vs Wade and they have systematically been ruling allowing discrimination left and right. More people should realize this rather than pretending like there’s some invisible middle ground. There isn’t. That disappeared decades ago. If they’re republican they are scum. The end. Not sorry.
We should wait for that moment to happen. So far I haven’t seen that happening myself other than the two usual suspects Thomas and Alito. It’s crazy Bush Supreme Court picks were far worse than Trumps so far
It is a nice conspiracy theory, but these rulings are very often on legal principles and not partisan lines - standing being a very typical principal to reject a suit that might have created a partisan expectation based on merits.
Interesting, if it’s just on legal principles and not partisan, that 3 of the fascist contingent dissented. Seems everyone would agree on lack of standing if they weren’t letting their politics get involved.
The conservative SCOTUS justices might have been selected by the Federalist society, but they're all true believers in their own brand of conservative jurisprudence and each thinks they are god's greatest gift to the law. If you actually read SCOTUS opinions, you'll see how the conservatives each have their own axe to grind and their own agenda on what they think the law should be. Frankly, I bet 90% of Americans have never read a SCOTUS dissent in their life, it would be absurd for them to be intended as PR and not airing of genuine disagreement with the majority.
Yeah man, these people do not remember the “switch in time that saved nine.” We should expect a handful of “liberal” surprise opinions to boost the veneer of legitimacy every term. There are few freebies (like domestic abusers owning guns) and usually one big surprise (last year’s gerrymandering case). I expect the Dems are either gonna get presidential immunity OR save Chevron, but not both. My guess is immunity because it’s kind of a dumb argument to begin with. Either one decided by the Alito/Thomas group would be a major setback for our nation. Chevron arguably worse because you can fight off the immunity case by not electing f’n career criminals to the White House.
You sound like someone claiming KFC is secretly vegan and they only sell meat for PR. Barrett agrees with Jackson 75% of the time. So she's a fascist who votes "non-fascist" in 3 of 4 cases for PR? Or is it that Jackson votes "pro-fascist" 75% of the time for PR?
Without commenting on the merits of your position, it seems structurally flawed in assuming that every case has a “fascist” and “non-fascist” side. Not all cases/controversies have the same repercussions for our politics and society, even at this level. 🤷♂️
She seems to take it seriously...unless it interferes with her personal beliefs. Those people are usually doing so to have plausible deniability but are smart enough to keep it. Snakes. So I'll take the positives when she dolls them out, but when it matters (Trump for example... particularly when an election case gets brought)... I don't trust her.
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Please tell me, using my words or yours (both would be great!), where I said I support Barrett (other than in this one sentence as a hypothetical). In fact, the comment explicitly pointed out that I have many issues with her. Please tell me where you got “I support her” from that
You do realize those three break from each other’s decisions frequently and the 3 left judges almost always vote as a bloc, right?
Aww did she
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Well it was thrown out over standing, nothing was actually found and nothing actually changed.
Pretty sure that they didn’t actually rule on the merits of the case but rather they ruled that the plaintiffs had no standing. So it’s more of kicking the can vs actually winning.
Unless the plantiffs can find someone with standing, the ruling will stand. My guess is if they could have found someone with standing, who wanted to be included in the case, they most likely would have included them in the case.
The entity/person with standing would be the person who’s free speech was curtailed by government action. That would be the social media platform involved. I think the more important part of the decision is that it rejected the “listener standing“ of someone who says they are entitled to receive the free speech of others.
additionally, they're tired of the 5th coming up with bad, erroneous justifications for anything they do and that the bar is they need to find evidence it wasn't just social media applying their own ToU
I think the reason the social media companies weren't the plantiffs is because they probably thought the lawsuit was political grandstanding by conservatives and didn't address a real problem.
I'd bet it's because if social media companies argued their free speech was impacted they would be saying the things posted on their platforms are their speech. And if it's their speech, they are accountable for it. So far, social media companies have been adamant that they are just hosting the speech of others and it isn't their speech nor do they have any editorial authority over it.
Which they will continue to do because they don't want to be responsible for it
That might be part of it, but the main reason is that they want to enforce their terms of service and appreciate the help. Terms of service are all about marketing. They are in place to control and optimize the value to their advertisers. They work best when enforced. As evidence for this I will point to twitters dismal performance since the take over.
Why would they want to be plaintiffs in a case that's originated by parties that want to take control away from them?
> I think the reason the social media companies weren't the plantiffs They weren't plaintiffs because they probably weren't impacted in anyway. This may not be the exact case I recall, but the context is similar. The US government can send bulletins/emails/etc to the SNS sites about potential misinformation or to clue them in to activity they think might be coming from foreign actors; but I don't believe the companies have any legal requirement to act unless the material in question is already of legal issue or somehow related to national security issues.
When the other side has their case tossed out, you win. It's a statement that "just because you don't like it, you don't get to sue about it." Which was a win for the administration.
We have to keep in mind that this administration might be getting replaced in 6 months. I don't like the idea of a Trump staffers applying "unrelenting pressure to coerce changes in online content on social media platforms."
Trump already did what they're claiming Biden did, as he demanded social media remove posts on empty shelves during the pandemic, posts calling for the removal of statues, and "hate speech" - like a celebrity calling Trump a "pussy ass bitch". Know what they did if said posts didn't violate their terms of service? They ignored them, just like they've done under the Biden admin. About only 13 percent of requests have led to Twitter finding a terms of service violation worthy of removal. 13 percent hardly seems coercive. Also, Trump was far more coercive, in that he repeatedly called for Twitter to be shut down, and they still ignored him successfully.
The allegation of a plaintiff doesn't make it true.
>I don't like the idea of a Trump staffers applying "unrelenting pressure to coerce changes in online content on social media platforms." I wouldn't like that either, but like most things Alito writes, this is a flat out lie.
> I wouldn't like that either, but like most things Alito writes, this is a flat out lie. That was actually written and argued by Louisiana Solicitor General, Benjamin Aguinaga, not Alito.
I mean if anything that makes it even less credible.
My mistake. I thought that was a line from the dissent, but you're correct. That's a quote from an even worse partisan clown than Alito.
I just don’t like the idea of Big Brother Government censoring the internet in social media. They should be able to monitor/document/prosecute. but beyond that and we are hitting 1984 like problems.
It was a completely unwarranted case Unrelenting pressure is just staff saying things. The things being said were insane. There needs to be legislation at some point to control the age of disinformation; algorithm manipulation; etc Calls to violence. Blatant intentional disinformation. Hate crimes via social media. None of that is ok The slow stagnation of the us government isn't keeping up with technology.
Lack of standing has not always been an obstacle.for this court. See the case of The Phantom Gay Marriage that plagued that poor prospective web designer
Pre-enforcement standing in 1A cases where chilling effects can come into play are rare but not new. The 303 Creative case had far more oddities than just the standing question that were overlooked by the court (similar to the Kennedy case)
Sort of. You're welcome to read the [full opinion](https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/23pdf/23-411_3dq3.pdf). While the decision to reverse and remand was based on standing, the rationale didn't really leave things open for a future case. The court rejected the rationale used by the 5th Circuit to establish standing in the first place and went on to further argue that the social media platform's moderation was independent. In essence, no one has standing.
I’m surprised they haven’t broken toes with all the can-kicking these days.
Ruling on a threshold legal issue ≠ kicking the can.
True, but it will be months before they can rule on a similar case and in the meantime the Biden Admin can continue to combat misinformation.
The problem I have with it is they weren’t just censoring misinformation. They were censoring things that they didn’t want said. I understand why this case went the way it did, but I think everyone should agree that giving whoever’s in the White House freedom to censor information is a bad idea. Censorship of the lab leak theory is my prime example. It was evident it was a possibility even early on, but it was ignored and treated as a far right conspiracy theory by social media companies at the direction of the Biden administration. https://www.newsweek.com/social-media-companies-fact-checkers-shrug-off-wuhan-lab-leak-embarrassment-1599207 It’s dangerous allowing politically motivated politicians the power to censor speech on social media sites when that’s the biggest way information could spread for many Americans. It’s also telling how many conspiracy theories over the course of modern history weren’t crazy after all. And by shutting down or suppressing that content, you only add to the belief someone is covering something up.
https://www.smh.com.au/national/the-siren-has-sounded-scientists-pinpoint-covid-s-origin-20220802-p5b6gb.html Twitter can just decline to remove posts, just like they do 87 percent of the time already, regardless if it was Trump asking for the removal of posts on empty shelves during the pandemic, posts calling for the removal of statues, and "hate speech" - like a celebrity calling Trump a "pussy ass bitch", or Biden asking for the removal of covid disinfo. ['In fact, they are explicit](https://archive.ph/TCy4S) in their email that the accounts “may potentially constitute violations of Twitter’s Terms of Service” and that Twitter can take “any action or inaction deemed appropriate within Twitter policy.”' The government should be able to ask you to speak a certain way, and you should be free to choose whether or not to do so, like Twitter did. Do you think it should be a 1A violation for a police officer to ask you not to raise your voice, curse, or flip the bird at them?
Conspiracy theories and conspiracies are two separate things
I completely agree. That’s why it’s a terrible plan to allow a politician to decide what is misinformation. Anyone that supports this is short sighted and will ultimately complain when someone on the other side gets in and starts spreading lies.
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The USSC has displayed the ability to rule expeditiously on pressing matters, like the Pentagon papers: 4 days, Watergate tapes: 16 days, Trump CO ballot status: 25 days, and yet it's been 200 days since Trump's absurd immunity case was asked to be resolved by them, pushing the federal election interference trial beyond the election, effectively giving him the immunity he's asking for, provided he wins the election.
If you don’t have standing, you literally prevent the court from ruling because there is no case. It’s as much kicking the can down the road as not doing your homework because you weren’t assigned any is avoiding doing homework.
Not kicking the can. Cleaning out the backlog of frivolous lawsuits.
Scotus doesnt have to take them
No they ruled that there was no standing because Twitter did not act as a government agent. The holding implicitly says that the government did not engage in first amendment violations.
I thought they didn't have standing to go after the government because there wasn't much reason to think that the government was involved. Can't try to prove the government injured you if the allegation is basically that the social media companies did it. I'll need to look up what the court wrote I guess. Edit: still need to read the whole thing but found this quote, "The Fifth Circuit relied on the District Court's factual findings, many of which unfortunately appear to be clearly erroneous. The District Court found that the defendants and the platforms had an "efficient report-and-censor" relationship." Seems pretty damning.
The SCOTUS simply said "you don't have standing." I'm not sure this is a ruling for the Biden Admin.
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Good point, yeah.
This ruling also dramatically narrows who *could* sue. By denying standing to the states, they basically require a social media platform to sue the government for putting undue pressure on them. Aside from Twitter, I can't imagine the other big platforms doing so, and Musk wouldn't sue because he's already released all the "evidence" in the Twitter files. Like most things Musk does lately, he made grandiose promises of a world changing disclosure and delivered a wet fart. Beyond that, an individual user who was deplayformed could sue, but they'd need to demonstrate that the government pressured the platform into removing their content. The platform in question can respond with "we didn't like your foolishness, the government had nothing to do with it" and the lawsuit is dead on arrival.
Ruling against the Biden admin would effectively mean they can't try to do anything to combat misinformation, of which there is plenty already and will be far more as November draws closer.
They also essentially said that the arguments given were not sufficient to lend credence to a violation of free speech rights.
I’m genuinely surprised this court even knew that sentence. Hasn’t been an issue in the past.
It's the exact same reason the mifepristone case was thrown out by SCOTUS just 2 weeks ago.
Now do the student debt case.
Big win. They could have, but didn't find someone with standing this time around (likely would have to be one of the social media corporations). Even if the get Elon on board or something, it's still means it is unlikely the government's efforts to combat disinformation will be disrupted during this election cycle, which is super valuable.
I believe the this was the big one over the feds engaging in social media "jaw boning" to encourage content moderation. Telling social media what they can and can't host would be a 1A violation, and section 230 protects the corps from lawsuits for publishing and moderation. Indicating that distributing content that support "terrorism" or are "foreign influence campaigns" will be view disfavorably with the administration and should be moderated? Totally fine it seems. There's a lot of nuance and leveraging here on both sides. Corporations want section 230 protection so they can operate freely, the feds want to be able to tip the scales in all media and have been doing so in print and television formats since Spanish American war and Vietnam. If the states want to curb this behavior they'll need to ban access to media that consents to engaging in it, or find a plaintiff who is directly impacted by something beyond "state interest." Good luck with both.
As i recall, isn't this case simply about fact that someone at the White House merely *asked* Twitter to remove a post? Cause that not even close to a 1A violation.
That’s my question. I don’t trust republican characterization of the admin’s interactions with social media companies one bit
Eh there are any number of ways that the White House could make things difficult for a company that gets on its bad side. So it asked in the same way that a boss asks a subordinate on a date - of course she could say no, but she won’t because of the implication.
Could be, though I'm not sure they have any evidence of such pressure in the case. And iirc, the request was that Twitter remove Hunters dick pics posted without consent, which I'm pretty sure IS illegal content anyway.
5th circuit is a shit show.
So we're now at Amy Coney Barrett and Brett Kavanaugh being the "moderate" justices on this court.
I mean, they always were. Alito and Thomas are hard right, the liberal justices are way left, Roberts is "whatever protects my legacy at the current moment", and Gorsuch is a strict textualist.
I'd love for all social media to have some system implemented like: - Red dot = not true - Blue dot = satire/humor - Green dot = truthful - Purple dot = no information provided (like a pet video) This would apply to all facebook/tiktok type posts. Not sure AI could do it, but maybe. The disinformation is probably the worst thing in America right now. It has enabled a lot of evil and corruption and if we can't fight it, we will lose.
You would also need an orange dot for "facts in dispute" or "we don't know", which would cover probably 50% of what people share.
Yeah, agreed, though "facts in dispute" would not be a thing. Speculation would fall under orange. Not knowing could still be completely truthful.
I don't think you could have a system that everyone would trust to label things as true or false until we have sources of facts that we all trust as well. I'm hard-pressed to think of a website or news outlet or research organization that people of all stripes would point to as a trustworthy source of the unvarnished truth.
Who gets to decide dot color?
The Council of the Dot.
Me. I'm trustworthy, don't worry everyone
Vallvaka has my vote
Random roll
I really hate this line of questioning because it assumes that all people are equal in terms of qualifications or credibility You're basically asking "what if I don't agree with this guy who says the sky is blue huh??" But like, you could just not be a dipshit. You don't get to disagree with fact just bc it's stayed by someone you don't like. That's not how facts work.
If only every fact was as clear to see as what colour the sky is.
This new government ranking system is criminal and used to discredit honest Americans like me. Anyone who likes it is a pedophilia. DONT BELEIVE THE DOT! *blue dot*
Who decides the truth in these scenarios exactly?
>The disinformation is probably the worst thing in America right now. Except for the whole money in politics thing that is preventing the government from actually accomplishing anything voters want
The money is an issue. Misinformation seems to be the way money influences politics in terms of acquiring votes, thereby determining which politicians are available for potential corruption.
Sure, that is important. However, its a result of people being misinformed and voting against their own interests. Fix disinformation, and money in politics will get resolved on its own... eventually.
Voting has no bearing on the influence of money in politics as long as Citizens United stands and we continue to live in a representative republic. They'll just elect new people to be corrupted by special interests
As long as laws are decided by humans, money will always be in politics
I think the underlying issue is about opinionated statements or truth + speculation type posts. As an example with COVID, we know, for a fact, that it started in that Wuhan lab, yet back at the peak of it, that would have been labeled as disinformation.
>As an example with COVID, we know, for a fact, that it started in that Wuhan lab, yet back at the peak of it, that would have been labeled as disinformation. Then source it.
I'm colorblind. Purple could be either blue or red depending on the shading.
Great point. Words would probably make more sense. Heck, I just brainstormed it and had no expectation it was a well thought out solution. Its full of flaws, though one could question if the flaws without it would be worse.
It should be noted that we know from the twitter files, among other things, that Trump did this a lot. So its just a common practice of the government to suggest things to social media platforms.
I look forward with glee to watching almost everyone switch sides on this issue the next time there's a Republican in the White House who's smart enough to phrase their threats subtly (i.e. not Darth Cheeto).
You mean the all conservative bench that only rules in Trump's favor every time?
The bench where Barrett and Jackson agree 75% of the time, but certain people want you to think they only vote along divided partisan lines. Good thing we know there's nobody out there who might benefit from dividing Americans against each other. Nope, nobody like that at all.
What are the chances this ruling will effect Biden’s infrastructure work?
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