Packingham v. North Carolina – Oral Argument February 27

Issue: Whether, under the court’s First Amendment precedents, a law that makes it a felony for any person on the state’s registry of former sex offenders 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 “know[n]” to allow minors to have accounts, is permissible, both on its face and as applied to petitioner, who was convicted based on a Facebook post in which he celebrated dismissal of a traffic ticket, declaring “God is Good!”

Case Documents and Details

Related posts

Subscribe
Notify of

We welcome a lively discussion with all view points - keeping in mind...

 

  1. Your submission will be reviewed by one of our volunteer moderators. Moderating decisions may be subjective.
  2. Please keep the tone of your comment civil and courteous. This is a public forum.
  3. Swear words should be starred out such as f*k and s*t and a**
  4. Please avoid the use of derogatory labels.  Use person-first language.
  5. Please stay on topic - both in terms of the organization in general and this post in particular.
  6. Please refrain from general political statements in (dis)favor of one of the major parties or their representatives.
  7. Please take personal conversations off this forum.
  8. We will not publish any comments advocating for violent or any illegal action.
  9. We cannot connect participants privately - feel free to leave your contact info here. You may want to create a new / free, readily available email address that are not personally identifiable.
  10. Please refrain from copying and pasting repetitive and lengthy amounts of text.
  11. Please do not post in all Caps.
  12. If you wish to link to a serious and relevant media article, legitimate advocacy group or other pertinent web site / document, please provide the full link. No abbreviated / obfuscated links. Posts that include a URL may take considerably longer to be approved.
  13. We suggest to compose lengthy comments in a desktop text editor and copy and paste them into the comment form
  14. We will not publish any posts containing any names not mentioned in the original article.
  15. Please choose a short user name that does not contain links to other web sites or identify real people.  Do not use your real name.
  16. Please do not solicit funds
  17. No discussions about weapons
  18. If you use any abbreviation such as Failure To Register (FTR), Person Forced to Register (PFR) or any others, the first time you use it in a thread, please expand it for new people to better understand.
  19. All commenters are required to provide a real email address where we can contact them.  It will not be displayed on the site.
  20. Please send any input regarding moderation or other website issues via email to moderator [at] all4consolaws [dot] org
  21. We no longer post articles about arrests or accusations, only selected convictions. If your comment contains a link to an arrest or accusation article we will not approve your comment.
  22. If addressing another commenter, please address them by exactly their full display name, do not modify their name. 
ACSOL, including but not limited to its board members and agents, does not provide legal advice on this website.  In addition, ACSOL warns that those who provide comments on this website may or may not be legal professionals on whose advice one can reasonably rely.  
 

28 Comments
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments

Is it a pertinent development that the new POTUS pretty much governs via Twitter and Facebook and shows no signs of giving up his toilet tweeting?

And the latest amici briefs continue to regurgitate the “frightening and high” nonsense. Sad!

How is it legal for the government, in briefs to the SCOTUS, to LIE about reoffense rates???? Is is ridiculous!

I’ve read those last two briefs listed supporting North Carolina and it doesn’t look good for us.

If the defendant doesn’t cut down Smith V Doe and Connecticut Dept of Transportation “frightening and high” crap we are in trouble. They also need to attack how this prevents free association and raising our own kids if we can’t use facebook.

They also need to bring up how the law only punishes law abiding Sex Offenders because those that want to molest children again won’t have a problem creating a fake email address to create a fake facebook page and there won’t be a way to catch them until its too late.

I wish this weren’t just one defendant but a class action so that less serious sex offenders would be involved and demonstrate how over-inclusive this is and how judges have been removed from the equation of ruling who should be treated like this.

Facebook, Twitter, et al should be avoided like the plague. Google the subject, and you will discover that social media has driven down the intelligence expenses of law enforcement, the FBI and the CIA. Like Adobe (known for the PDF file format), the government will never let Twitter and Facebook go out of business.

I like how the Government Respondent uses Sex Offender and Sexual Predator interchangeably.

http://www.scotusblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/15-1194-respondent-brief.pdf

The First Amendment time, place, and manner test leaves States some lati-
tude to decide how best to protect the public from habitual sex offenders.

http://www.scotusblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/15-1194_amicus_resp_louisiana.pdf

Habitual Sex Offenders? Was that a misprint on their AMICI CURIAE Brief?

I do enjoy the interchangable use of “sexual predator”, and “sexual offender”….last I checked, the law actually did differentiate between the two! Stupid me!

There is a compelling case to be made, that in today’s world that even the president uses social media as a way to communicate effectively to people. It is the new town square. In fact, how many town squares have parks that sex offenders are bared from.

I find it to be quite favorable to us that the government has chosen to base their case argument on the old established falsehoods. Far too many state attorney generals have been winning challenges by quoting the 2003 SCOTUS decisions and omitting up to date studies. This is changing in federal courts and will soon change in the high court as well. I believe we will prevail on this case.
Question: If we do prevail on this case, would this open facebook up to a legal challenge for their ban on registered citizens?

Its pathetic that these state officials just keep regurgitating the false facts and using under reporting as a valid argument in their responses and getting away with it without any type of vigorous response..My god these cases are just solidifying the governments hold on us and strengthening the precedents….How hard is it to provide arguments like I have in my motion at
http://mllkeys20112011.wixsite.com/mysite
Please moderator post my link to my site.. People complained about me posting my long arguments on here so I created a site that they can choose to look at if they want so Please post it…
thank you………

Mike R, you need to read this brief for the First Amendment case and incorporate it into yours:

Brief amicus curiae of The National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers

http://www.scotusblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/15-1194_amicus-petitioner-NACDL.pdf

This is the BEST argument I’ve seen yet that could be used against ANY Sex Offender law, and the registry itself!

Please Read!

Wow Chris i just read those briefs and I am very impressed and encouraged about what the outcome of that individual case will be….I love the fact that they touch on the firearms issue because I have always thought the same thing..How can they take away such a fundamental right as the right to bear arms without any type of nexus between the offense committed or the actual dangerousness the individual poses.This has definitely gave me pause as to what else I should include in my motion because there is a lot of ammunition in those briefs…….

hey abolish be sure to read those briefs because they are touching on the exact issues your talking about…although they are not challenging or expressing that all of our rights should be restored after someone does their time they have provided an starting point for such an argument…they make a pretty good argument against all the collateral consequences of a felony conviction…

North Carolina: the unconstitutional state.
Auto plates state motto.
As Chick Hearn would say :
SlammmmmmmDUNK.
Our Constitution
Wins .

Reversed and remanded. Unanimous decision of the Court. Opinion by Kennedy.

The court rules that the NC statute impermissible restricts lawful speech in violation of the First Amendment.”

https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/16pdf/15-1194_08l1.pdf

Praise God!