A CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHT TO TWEET | A Supreme Twofer Suggested By Udall
February 28, 2017
THE RIGHT TO POST
|At the high court yesterday was a case about whether North Carolina can bar registered sex offenders from using Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, etc. Oral arguments evolved from a discussion about the case to a broader conversation about the role of social media in modern America and how it has transformed civic discourse. PRESIDENT TRUMP, Twitter’s best friend, was unsurprisingly a topic of conversation as well. A majority of justices seemed prepared to strike down the law, indicating that it goes too far in restricting First Amendment rights and cuts off services that have become almost indispensable to millions of Americans.
FOLLOW BACK
|Perhaps the most outspoken of the justices yesterday, JUSTICE ELENA KAGAN said the North Carolina law bars folks from reading messages from their elected representatives, including those of Mr. Trump. Kagan: “Everybody uses Twitter. All 50 governors, all 100 senators, every member of the House has a Twitter account. So this has become crucial – crucially important channel of political communication.” She added, “So whether it’s political community, whether it’s religious community, I mean, these sites have become embedded in our culture as ways to communicate and ways to exercise our constitutional rights, haven’t they?” Justice Kagan, does this mean you use Twitter too?!
WHAT CAN I SAY, IT'S COMPLICATED
|Justices heard another case yesterday which involves a lawful permanent resident who had sex with his 16-year-old girlfriend when he was 20 and 21 years old. Sam Hananel with The Associated Press reports the court seemed sympathetic to the immigrant facing deportation after being convicted for having consensual sex with an underage girl.
THE SUPREMES
|Both the title of my favorite “West Wing” episode and possibly the inspiration for SENATOR TOM UDALL’S suggested strategy for the Supreme Court. The Democrat from New Mexico suggested yesterday to Gorsuch and his team of White House aides that both JUDGE NEIL GORSUCH and JUDGE MERRICK GARLAND should be placed on the Supreme Court at the same time. The White House appeared to dismiss the idea.
PUTTING MY MOTHER'S CATS ON THE SUPREME COURT
|In what has been lauded by critics as the best episode of “The West Wing” ever (#FakeNews), PRESIDENT JED BARTLET puts forth two nominees after a conservative justice dies. In the show, Bartlet’s staff convinces the ultra-liberal chief justice to step down so they can replace him with a liberal nominee while simultaneously filling the seat left vacant by the recently deceased justice with a more conservative choice. Change the names—and the fact that what I described was a television show—and it sounds a lot like what Udall was proposing yesterday. But a spokeswoman for SENATOR UDALL says the senator isn’t an avid fan of “The West Wing” and that he got his idea from a constituent. “It’s such a persistent controversy, it’s not surprising it would be covered in ‘The West Wing,’ but he didn’t really watch the show,” she said.
OTHER NEWS
The Supreme Court Should Decide the Gavin Grimm Case Now
Slate“The Supreme Court can and should still decide the Grimm case and settle definitively that federal prohibitions on sex discrimination include discrimination against transgender people. There are both human and legal reasons for the Court to move forward.”
Trump Plans to Begin E.P.A. Rollback With Order on Clean Water
The New York Times“Two Supreme Court decisions related to clean water protection, in 2001 and 2006, created legal confusion about whether the federal government had the authority to regulate the smaller streams and headwaters and about other water sources such as wetlands.”