Supreme Court: Court adds five new cases to docket

You are correct, Eric. The U.S. Supreme Court today granted cert in a First Amendment case involving a registered citizen. Below is basic information about that case including its prior ruling.

Packingham v. North Carolina, No. 15-1194

Ruling Below

N.C., 777 S.E.2d 738, 2015 BL 366550, 98 CrL 141

Summary of Ruling Below

A North Carolina law that bars registered sex offenders from accessing social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter doesn’t violate the First Amendment, either on its face or as applied to the defendant, who was convicted under the law for having a Facebook page. The statute is narrowly tailored to serve the substantial governmental interest of protecting minors from sex offenders and leaves available ample alternative channels of communication.

Question(s) Presented

Under this court’s First Amendment precedents, is a law permissible on its face that makes it a felony for any person on the state’s sex offender registry to “access” a wide array of websites—including Facebook, YouTube, and nytimes.com—that enable communication, expression and the exchange of information among their users, if the site is known to allow minors to have accounts, and is the law permissible as applied to the defendant, who was convicted based on a Facebook post in which he celebrated dismissal of a traffic ticket, declaring “God is Good!”

The state clings on to their ideology that recidivism rates mean nothing, “because sex crimes are under-reported,” because the rates of re-conviction don’t support their desired outcome.

I find it curious the court wants to hear a case it has supported in previous rulings. The prediction is they will uphold it again, since all other cases have regulatory punishments attached as well. I see no other reason for their acceptance of the case, because to invalidate the statute would be a complete departure from their prior rulings, and of the registry. They can use any number of acceptable legal precedents, it is not compelled speech, it does not limit excessive speech, you are not citizens-you are evil garbage, we determine your rights-if any, it does not infringe on the right of expression, there are numerous alternative firms of speech, states can do whatever they want to do to you-who cares, we will never hear the case out of Michigan and the 6th Circuit-they are not real American’s, because real American’s want you all out of the country on a deserted island, why can’t you just accept the inevitable fact the constitution is meaningless to us, we have the power, we only took this case to give you a glimmer of hope, and then we will crush it again, you sickos, lol. We hate you, don’t you get it by now? Are you stupid or what? Why don’t you try religion, involuntary servitude, bills of attainder, we will shoot them down too. Lol. Your attempts are a waste of time, maybe when we are all gone, think again, you whackos. Wahaha hahahaha!

After this ruling…the north carolina motto on auto license plates will be:
north carolina the dumbest state.

Just as a recap, here is the link to the full NC Supreme Court debacle decision…

http://cases.justia.com/north-carolina/supreme-court/2015-366pa13.pdf

The opinions are a bit sketchy, but the dissent is scathing, so that is fairly good news.

The attorney for the defendant, Glenn Gerding (who is also a retired Navy JAG; rank of O5-Commander), doesn’t appear to be incompetent per se, but has never addressed constitutional issues with regard to registrants before. I hope that Janice not only can attend oral arguments, but can convince Gerding to research how the federal courts have been listening to pertinent arguments with regard to anti-constitutional registrant laws.

My opinion is that a case that hits SCOTUS belongs to ALL of us, in the sense that we will experience the fallout one way or the other, and therefore have not just a right, but a duty to try to prevent a bad desicion from taking hold.

Let’s hope the less-than-full court as it is today does not get impacted by the minus 1 it has on ruling on this because of political idiocy starting with the VP’s speech years ago when he was in the Senate for no particular reason other than grandstanding and the follow through of the Senate since then. I truly believe Justice Scalia would say in favor of this gentleman, the state is wrong.

As laid out, NC is in err here and SCOTUS should strike this law against expression down where the intent was of gratitude, praise and nothing more.

Most of us can’t comment on the one sided and obviously misguided intenet news because you need a Facebook in order to comment. Nor can we respond to all of the other commenters of internet news articles. We can’t voice our American opinions because for 90% of the news sites, one needs a Facebook in order to comment. ENOUGH SAID??

To Timmr

Like your style, lol. You know, I was thinking about the Inquisition comparison in regard to the establishment of a religion cause of action. Seems to me we are the only folks required to pass a litmus test to get our citizenship back; both in regard to our character and competency. I believe this would be a major question related to a loss of citizenship claim under say Trop v U.S., he was a soldier that deserted during wartime and they tried to have his citizenship revoked. Under the Sora laws our citizenship is also revoked or suspended. But the scrotus ruled this unlawful.

Since when did it become an acceptable practice to create laws with severe punishment that are designed solely to prevent you from committing a crime that already has a sever punishment?

Doesn’t that go against “innocent until proven guilty” for future acts regardless of any past crimes?

Also, these laws only negatively impact law abiding citizens because those who are going to use the web sites for illegal purposes will do so anyway, and without reporting the activity in states that don’t forbid it but require disclosure of all social usernames and posts.

This would be like making it illegal for a convicted drunk driver to go into anyplace that sells alcohol or where alcohol can be consumed, or requiring them to immediately inform law enforcement when they take a drink so the cops can set up a trap to catch them drinking and driving. The alcoholic isn’t going to report it any more often than they take the precaution of giving their keys to the bartender.

The laws are far from “narrowly tailored” as well. Just like IML doesn’t target those convicted of international sex tourism, these laws against free speech do not target those convicted of luring a minor on a social media site. It tosses everyone with a sexual component to the crime into one huge basket.

Also, this is yet another perfect example where this restriction, and the registry as a whole, should have been attacked as a violation as a “Bill Of Attainder”. Even though it wasn’t, the arguments that previously won against a Bill Of Attainder are applicable to this case.

Please read this text below, and I am sorry I don’t have the source but it should be easy to find:

United States v. Brown
In Brown, the Court’s analysis goes further to expand the concept of
punishment and specificity in finding a bill of attainder.The statute at
issue made it a crime for a member of the Communist Party to serve as an
officer or employee of a labor union. Instead of laying out particular acts
that would disqualify a person from specific employment, Congress made
the determination that members of the Communist Party possessed certain
feared but un-enumerated characteristics, which made them more likely to
“initiate political strikes” against the U.S. Government. “The command of
the Bill of Attainder Clause [is] that a legislature can provide that persons
possessing certain characteristics must abstain from certain activities, but
must leave to other tribunals the task of deciding who possesses those
characteristics.” Moreover, there needs to be a “demonstrable
relationship” between the aims Congress sought to avoid, the individuals
who would carry out those aims, and the characteristics of the target group.
The Court determined that no legitimate relationship existed because even if
Congress had good reason to believe that some Communists would use their
positions in unions to bring about political upheaval, “it can[not]
automatically be inferred that all members share their evil purposes or
participate in their illegal conduct.”7 6 Further, in support of the Court’s
determination that no legitimate relationship existed, it drew contrast
between the current case and Board of Governors ofFederal Reserve System
v. Agnew,n a case where the Act in question was trying to prevent a
fiduciary conflict of interest.7 As such, Agnew illustrated a meaningful
distinction from section 504, which inflicted its deprivation “upon the
members of a political group thought to present a threat to the national
security.”‘ 9 Furthermore, the Court, believing that it would be antiquated to
limit punishment to only a retributive purpose, found it appropriate to
expand the meaning of punishment in order to “serve several purposes;
retributive, rehabilitative, deterrent-and preventative.”80 In doing so, the
Court relied on historical considerations that many English and early
American bills of attainder were enacted for preventative purposes.81 This
Court, like the one in Lovett, took the combination of factors together to
determine section 504 to be a prohibited bill of attainder.82