Tag Archives: rights

A Free Speech Oral Argument

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(Pun not necessarily intended.)

The Supreme Court heard oral argument in the case of a 14-year-old girl who tried out for, and didn’t make, a varsity cheerleading team and subsequently vented her frustrations in a Snapchat rife with “colorful metaphors.”

The girl’s school punished her with a year-long suspension from cheerleading, she demurred from the punishment, lower courts agreed with her, and the school continued its protest to the Supremes.

Attorney Lisa Blatt, representing the girl’s school, had this, among others, at oral argument, as paraphrased by Just the News:

Schools aren’t trying to police political, religious, or critical expression, or impose the heckler’s veto…. They want to address digital bullying, harassment, and cheating….
A student who is upset at her teacher can safely text her views to friends but not picket the teacher’s house, Blatt told Chief Justice John Roberts: the “manner” of speech is the issue, not the offensiveness of it.

And

[Blatt] rejected the suggestion that students can get in trouble for simply sharing unpopular views: wearing a Confederate flag symbol “alone” is protected, but not using it to “terrorize” a black student.

Blatt seemed unable to address those arguments in detail, however.

What about students or teachers who think a student’s positions on police, politics, or religion are themselves offensive?

What about students or teachers who think a student’s disagreement with another student’s (or teacher’s) positions on police, politics, or religion is harassment or bullying?

What about students who think another student’s wearing of a Confederate flag symbol “alone” terrorizes them?

We’re on a short, slippery, downhill road off the edge of a very high, steep cliff when we begin expanding limits on speech.

What Problem is being Addressed?

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What problem are President Joe Biden (D) and his Progressive-Democrat brethren trying to fix?

It’s not the rescue of an already strongly growing economy. The expansion numbers are:

  • GDP growth for Q3-2020 33.4%, Q4-2020 4.3%, Q1-2021 6.4%
  • unemployment at 6.0% and falling as of March 2021
  • labor force participation rate rising from January 2021 61.4% to March 2021 61.5%
  • rising PMI from Jan 2021 59.2 (itself already quite high) to March 2021 64.7

Not the problems of an already waning threat from the Wuhan Virus situation

  • rapidly declining case rates
  • rapidly declining mortality rates
  • accelerating vaccination rates from Operation Warp Speed, begun in high numbers in late 2020

No, the problem Biden, et al., are trying to fix is the impermanence of Progressive-Democrat power.

That’s what’s behind their attempts to

  • eliminate our nation’s borders
  • seize Federal control over States’ election procedures
  • create, through their administrative state, a permanent welfare state
  • restructure and pack the Supreme Court

Another Start

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And an illustration of why this sort of start is so necessary.

The Florida House of Representatives is putting forth a law (readable here; remarkably, it’s only 12 pages long, vice another party’s Federal level laws) regarding individual liberty and due process on Florida’s taxpayer funded college/university campuses.

Some high points:

[S]tudents would be permitted to conduct “free-speech activities”, including “all forms of peaceful assembly, protests, and speeches; distributing literature; carrying signs; circulating petitions; faculty research, lectures, writings, and commentary, whether published or unpublished; and the recording and publication, including the Internet publication, of video or audio recorded in outdoor areas of campus.

And

The State Board of Education may not shield students, faculty, or staff at Florida College System institutions from free speech protected under the First Amendment to the United States Constitution[.]

The bill also protects professors’ intellectual property. While students can record the profs’ lectures, they are not permitted to publicly release the recordings with the profs’ permission. The recordings are solely for the students’

own personal educational use, in connection with a complaint to the public institution of higher education where the recording was made, or as evidence in, or in preparation for, a criminal or civil proceeding.

Of course, if the matter does go to court, the recorded lecture(s) would enter the public record, as they should.

The proposed bill also makes a strong move, contra the Obama DoEd and President Joe Biden’s (D) reconstruction of it, to protect students’ access to due process when faced with allegations.

Colleges and universities who discipline a student for violating the code of conduct must give written notice within 7 business days that includes allegations being investigated, the citation to the specific provision of the code of conduct at issue, the process being used to determine whether a violation has occurred, and the date, time and location of the disciplinary hearing.
At least five days prior to the disciplinary hearing, each student must also be provided with:

  • A list of all known witnesses that will provide information against the student or student organization, all know information related to the allegation
  • The right to a “presumption that no violation occurred”
  • The right to an impartial hearing officer
  • The right against self-incrimination and to remain silent
  • The right to present relevant information and question witnesses
  • The right to an advisor, advocate, or legal representative at the student or student organization’s own expense
  • The right to appeal the final decision of hearing directly to the vice president of student affairs or any other senior administration designated by the code of conduct to hear the appeal and make a final decision
  • The right to an accurate and complete record of every disciplinary proceeding relating to the charged violation of the code, including record of any appeal, to be made, preserved, and available for copying upon request by the charged student or student organization
  • A provision setting a time limit for charging a student or student organization with a violation of the code of conduct, and a description of those circumstances in which that time limit may be extended or waived

And an illustration of why this sort of law is so badly needed, conveniently provided by a Progressive-Democrat, the State Senator Tina Polsky, who

questioned whether hate groups such as Nazis or the Ku Klux Klan would be able to enter a campus under the legislation.
“You just can’t practice in absolutes and say that every single person is welcome on campus, because they’re not,” Polsky told AP. “This is meant to be a safe place for students.”

Umm, no. Leave aside Polsky’s own absolutism even as she claims otherwise with her cynical distortion that the proposed law says every single person is welcome on campus. Every single person isn’t welcome, true enough. But that unwelcome is strictly limited to criminals. Nazis, KKK, any other solely nasty person saying nasty things, of course must be welcome, else we’ll have the likes of Polsky defining for us who will be welcome, what speech or political bias will be permitted.

Beyond that, No, a campus most assuredly is not intended to be a safe place for students. It’s intended to be a place where various, and variously conflicting, views of the political and social world are openly explored, discussed, and debated. That can be deucedly uncomfortable and challenging to cherished beliefs. Students, though, aren’t on campus to be wrapped in swaddling blankets.

The safe place for students? That only exists with the safety of liberty for all of us, with the safety of thinking and speaking aloud those thoughts freely by all of us.

Yes, I’d give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety’s sake. But Progressive-Democrats like Polsky would deny us that safety because they know so much better. And that makes them especially dangerous to our liberty.

The Relevance of Constitutionality

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The Wall Street Journal had an editorial Wednesday that decried Progressive-Democrats’ (my term; the editors wrote only of “Democrats”) DC statehood “gambit.” In their piece, the editors made the case that the move, as designed by Congressional Progressive-Democrats, was unconstitutional.

One part of their writing jumped out at me.

But the impetus behind both measures [Supreme Court packing and DC “statehood”] is the same—to tilt the constitutional playing field and consolidate liberal power.

Indeed. It’s important to keep in mind that today’s liberals, far from being classically liberal, are 18th century monarchist, Big Government Knows All/Controls All proponents. For such as these, our Constitution is whatever they say it is—if it has any value at all. Their own hero, Woodrow Wilson, insisted that our Constitution is obsolete and ought be done away with altogether.

Today’s monarchist liberals are bent on the same aim, this time by simply ignoring it.

Stuff and Nonsense

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That’s what my grandmother—a much more gracious woman than I ever have been a man—would call things and behaviors that were utter…foolishness.

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis (R) has signed a law that toughens the penalties for engaging in a variety of acts during riots. Engaging in the riots themselves has long been illegal.

The law, which goes into effect immediately, grants civil legal immunity to people who drive through protesters blocking a road and allows authorities to hold arrested demonstrators from posting bail until after their first court date. The legislation increases the charge for battery on a police officer during a riot and adds language that could force local governments to justify a reduction in law enforcement budgets.
The bill allows people to sue local governments over personal or property damages if they were determined to have interfered with law enforcement response during civil unrest. It also increases penalties for protesters who block roadways or deface public monuments and creates a new crime, “mob intimidation.”

Naturally, the Left is up in arms about the law. Kara Gross, ACLU of Florida Legislative Director and Senior Policy Counsel:

The problem with this bill is that the language is so overbroad and vague…that it captures anybody who is peacefully protesting at a protest that turns violent through no fault of their own. Those individuals who do not engage in any violent conduct under this bill can be arrested and charged with a third-degree felony and face up to five years in prison and loss of voting rights. The whole point of this is to instill fear in Floridians.

Not at all. Those peacefully protesting when their protest turns violent through no fault of their own can leave, and they can show that they were trying to leave if they’re arrested on the way out of the area. It’s their conscious choice to remain or to not try to leave when the violence starts. If they make that choice, they’re no longer peaceful protesters; they’ve created themselves rioters.

Progressive stuff and nonsense.