Judge Overturns 64-Year-Old Law Banning Protests in Front of Supreme Court: Roberts Fights Back

[The Straight Story]

Judge Overturns 64-Year-Old Law Banning Protests in Front of Supreme Court: Roberts Fights Back

For more than six decades, it’s been legal to protest near the U.S. Supreme Court building in Washington, DC, just not directly outside of it.

But a federal judge ruled this week that a 64-year-old law prohibiting demonstrators from marching on the marble plaza in front of the Supreme Court is unconstitutional.

Judge Beryl A. Howell called the legislation passed by Congress in 1949 “unreasonable” and “substantially overbroad.”

“It cannot possibly be consistent with the First Amendment for the government to so broadly prohibit expression in virtually any form in front of a courthouse, even the Supreme Court,” Howell wrote in a 68-page opinion.

The legal challenge to the law came from Harold Hodge, a Maryland man who was arrested in 2011 outside the Supreme Court building while wearing a sign that read; “The U.S. Gov. Allows Police To Illegally Murder And Brutalize African Americans And Hispanic People.”

http://www.allgov.com/news/controversies/judge-overturns-64-year-old-law-banning-protests-in-front-of-supreme-court-roberts-fights-back-130614?news=850290

[liberal_at_heart]

1. defending the constitution? What a novel idea.

[tarheelsunc]

2. As much as Snowden seems like a partisan with an agenda...

when you combine his story with the fact that pretty much every other news story lately involves some infringement of constitutional rights by the government, it's pretty hard to deny that the Constitution is being shredded page by page.

[Hydra]

3. If Snowden is a "Partisan"

Then what he released to Greenwald should be nothing more than a heavily shaded matter of opinion.

The fact is, the people in power are finding the Constitution more and more "inconvenient." What they want to replace that with seems to be some sort of money = power/privilege framework.

Too bad for the 95% of us that would get ground into powder in such a system, right?

[atreides1]

4. In other words

What those in power are striving to accomplish is to set themselves up as a new form of nobility...where the amount of money they have will determine their standing.

Talk about taking the country back...back to the 17th Century!

[Hydra]

5. Pretty much

The wealth thing makes it look more like it's a merit thing and wages make it look less like serfdom or slavery, but the core of it is there- they want the power, privilege and immunity to law, as well as ensuring that their children are safe and have access to the same generation after generation.

It's very much a step backwards to institutionalized sociopathy, but that's how they roll, and that's the behavior we as a society reward.

Gotta change what we value if we want to see real change.

[L0oniX]

6. Protesting there must be effective or they wouldn't want to keep it away.