SCOTUS rules in favor of man who posted violent threats on Facebook

[All Along The Watchtower]

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http://www.cnn.com/2015/06/01/politics/supreme-court-elonis-facebook-ruling/

[Marokai Backbeat]

They made the right decision.

[SteveRogers]

Good decision, but it should be noted that the court kind of punted by not addressing the First Amendment issue.

[jaichind]

They made the right decision.

[Murica!]

They made the right decision.

[Sprouts Farmers Market ✘]

They made the right decision.

All praise the great Roberts court!

[Torie]

This is not a First Amendment case, but rather a statutory interpretation case, and the Alito partial dissent argues that there is no Constitutional right to make threats, and while the Court refused to reach the issue, I suspect it probably won't find a Constitutional right to do that, if and when the issue is before it and they have to decide it one way or the other.

[Landslide Lyndon]

Yeah, I don't see why is there such jubilation about this decision. I thought it has long been established that death threats aren't protected speech.

[Cory]

Yeah, I don't see why is there such jubilation about this decision. I thought it has long been established that death threats aren't protected speech.

[Zioneer]

Yeah, I don't see why is there such jubilation about this decision. I thought it has long been established that death threats aren't protected speech.

[Attorney General, LGC Speaker, and Former PPT Dwarven Dragon]

They made the right decision.

[MaxQue]

Terrible. Death threats should be illegal, simply. Silly Supremes.

[DrScholl]

Death threats are illegal, but in this case, the vagueness of said threats makes it hard to uphold a conviction.

[SteveRogers]

Yeah, I don't see why is there such jubilation about this decision. I thought it has long been established that death threats aren't protected speech.

It is well settled that true threats are not protected speech. However, the constitutional issue in this case was about what the First Amendment requires the government to prove in order to deem someone's speech to be unprotected threats in order to convict them for making threats. The government here argued that it need only prove that a reasonable person would feel threatened by Mr. Elonis's facebook posts. The defense argued that the government must prove that it was Mr. Elonis's subjective intent to threaten. That could potentially make a big difference in the age of social media where it's hard for a speaker to know what audience his facebook posts might reach and much easier for someone somewhere to take something the wrong way.

The court of course dodged this question by reading some (still unclear) mental state requirement into the statute as a matter of statutory interpretation so as not to have reach the constitutional question.

[Beet]

IMO, the problem of online threats needs to be taken more seriously than it generally is.

Technology has made us all more inter-connected, which is generally a good thing as it breaks down geographic barriers and allows communication between people who otherwise would have no ability to communicate. However, it also has a tendency to exacerbate the negative side of human nature. While at one time, threatening or bullying thoughts would remain in the mind of the person thinking them, now it is a lot easier to translate those thoughts into anonymous (and not so anonymous) attacks.

[DemPGH]

Absolutely the right decision.

A couple of instances of people being arrested for posting something vaguely threatening on Facebook have come to light in the past year, and I think that's very much an overreach. Part of the problem too is we're on a slippery slope with this sort of thing. People get on there and mouth off.