A Supreme Court case threatens to take away your right to protest, in Mckesson v. Doe
Aside from the weird spanking part, this article is important to point out how absurdly ridiculous judge Elrod’s decision from the fifth circuit is. SCOTUS needs to give it a summary reversal.
@tsyum the vox article is misleading, though, as vox so often is.
The right to protest is not on the table here. This case is all about how state law engages with a person potentially demonstrating negligence by directing a situation that ended in violence.
That has nothing to do with protesting itself (unless one believes protesting is necessarily violent, at which point eek), but relates to a content neutral application of community standards of responsibility for safety.
It says, protest all you want, so long as you do so in a reasonably responsible manner.
@tsyum but that's exactly what the Supreme Court said, that officials do seem confused about what constitutes violence, so legally they need to go work that out before it can be further addressed by the courts.
In this case the claim is that an "individual threw a piece of concrete or a similar rock-like object, striking respondent Officer Doe in the face. Officer Doe suffered devastating injuries in the line of duty, including loss of teeth and brain trauma."
I don't think it's particularly reasonable to consider that violent and consider how it would be handled under the state law, independent of anything involving protest.
So yep, SCOTUS said to go back and figure out some of the confusion about violence.
https://www.scotusblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/mckesson-v-doe.pdf
@volkris ? Officials do seem confused (intentionally or not) regarding what constitutes violence.
And Vox makes a good point regarding protest organization. We should be mindful of literal versus effective restrictions on protesting. Given our history, I still think this article is very important