Those political hacks that we call the Supreme Court are about to lay into the Constitution to settle a ‘First Amendment’ issue….

Supreme Court justices sounded hesitant Monday to dismiss First Amendment concerns about state laws that would restrict social media companies’ ability to moderate users’ posts. The court spent four hours hearing oral arguments about laws passed in Florida and Texas that are blocked for now, the New York Times reports. Both laws were approved by Republican-controlled legislatures, a response to complaints from the political right that the companies were censoring comments from its supporters while allowing posts expressing other viewpoints. The court’s decisions could have broad implications for the future of online debate.

A series of issues involved includes censorship and whether to treat social media like a phone company that transmits users’ content and can’t block any of it at will, or like a newspaper, which can decide what opinions it will run. The Florida law is the more sweeping, and Justice Sonia Sotomayor said it could keep the online marketplace Etsy from curating items being sold by its users, per CNN. “This is so, so broad, it’s covering almost everything” on the internet, Sotomayor said. President Biden’s administration agrees with the technology companies that say the platforms have the right to moderate content; Donald Trump’s lawyers filed a brief calling on the court to uphold Florida’s law.

In musing about censorship, Justices Samuel Alito and Brett Kavanaugh brought up George Orwell, per MSNBC. Alito expressed concern about “Orwellian” private conduct, while Kavanaugh said he thinks of government control of media, not private control, as being “Orwellian.” Alito expressed dislike of the term “content moderation,” per the AP. “Is it anything more than a euphemism for censorship?” Alito asked. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson brought up whether the platforms are a public square or a private company. A ruling should be issued by summer.

So are these sites public or private?

It will be interesting to see what the “Hacks” will do.

On a separate issue….is honking one’s horn protected under free speech?

If you’re tempted to honk your car horn in support of protesters, you might want to think twice in California. That’s because on Friday, a three-judge panel for the US Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit upheld a lower court’s ruling against Susan Porter, deciding that honking one’s horn isn’t free speech. The case saw its origins in October 2017, when Porter repeatedly leaned on her car horn in solidarity with protesters she was driving past outside of GOP Rep. Darrell Issa’s office in Vista, who were demonstrating against Issa’s support of then-President Trump, per the Washington Post.

Porter honked her horn a total of 14 times, in short bursts, as she cruised by the demonstrators—and was subsequently pulled over by a San Diego County sheriff’s deputy, who gave her a ticket and cited her for misusing her car horn. The citation came about because Porter was said to have violated a 1913 law that prohibits anyone from using the horn for anything other than warning other drivers, per Courthouse News. Although that citation was dismissed the following February when the deputy didn’t show in court, Porter brought a lawsuit, claiming her First Amendment and 14th Amendment rights had been violated.

Porter noted that honking wasn’t just for political speech, but also for celebrating good news, greeting people, or alerting someone that you’d arrived to pick them up. The lower court’s decision against her, however, was handed down in February 2021, which the appeals court upheld last week. “[For] the horn to serve its intended purpose as a warning device, it must not be used indiscriminately,” Judge Michelle Friedland wrote for the majority, per the Post. Friedland added that there were other ways to show support for protesters, including waves, giving a thumbs-up, and bumper stickers. Dissenting Judge Marsha Berzon disagreed, noting, per the Metropolitan News-Enterprise: “Honking at a political protest is a core form of expressive conduct that merits the most stringent constitutional protection.”

SCOTUS refuses to tackle this one….

The Supreme Court has declined to hear a case on whether honking a car horn is protected free speech, leaving in place a lower court’s ruling upholding a California law that bans excessive honking. Lawyers for Susan Porter, who was ticketed in 2017 after honking in support of anti-Donald Trump protesters outside the office of GOP Rep. Darrell Issa, said they were disappointed and they hope the issue will be revisited in future cases, the Hill reports. “We continue to believe that sounding the vehicle horn to support a protest or engage in personal expression is a core First Amendment right,” said David Loy, legal director for the First Amendment Coalition,” calling such honking a “longstanding tradition.”

And their term will continue….

I wait and watch.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”