How Conservatives Weaponized the First Amendment

[elleng]

'On the final day of the Supreme Court term last week, Justice Elena Kagan sounded an alarm.

The court’s five conservative members, citing the First Amendment, had just dealt public unions a devastating blow. The day before, the same majority had used the First Amendment to reject a California law requiring religiously oriented “crisis pregnancy centers” to provide women with information about abortion.

Conservatives, said Justice Kagan, who is part of the court’s four-member liberal wing, were “weaponizing the First Amendment.”

The two decisions were the latest in a stunning run of victories for a conservative agenda that has increasingly been built on the foundation of free speech. Conservative groups, borrowing and building on arguments developed by liberals, have used the First Amendment to justify unlimited campaign spending, discrimination against gay couples and attacks on the regulation of tobacco, pharmaceuticals and guns.

“The right, which had for years been hostile to and very nervous about a strong First Amendment, has rediscovered it,” said Burt Neuborne, a law professor at New York University.

The Citizens United campaign finance case, for instance, was decided on free-speech grounds, with the five-justice conservative majority ruling that the First Amendment protects unlimited campaign spending by corporations. The government, the majority said, has no business regulating political speech.

The dissenters responded that the First Amendment did not require allowing corporate money to flood the political marketplace and corrupt democracy.

“The libertarian position has become dominant on the right on First Amendment issues,” said Ilya Shapiro, a lawyer with the Cato Institute. “It simply means that we should be skeptical of government attempts to regulate speech. That used to be an uncontroversial and nonideological point. What’s now being called the libertarian position on speech was in the 1960s the liberal position on speech.” . .

What I have come to see is that it’s a mistake to think of free speech as an effective means to accomplish a more just society.”'>>>

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/30/us/politics/first-amendment-conservatives-supreme-court.html?

[unblock]

1. I think free speech can create a more just society

I don't think we should change out opinion of it just because the right found a way to misinterpret and misapply it.

My free speech rights don't give me the right to opt out of taxes to the extent I disagree with government policies. My free speech comes in the form of having a day in creating those policies through elections and referendums and such. If I lose, I still have to pay because I'm part of the country and benefit from government policies even if I disagree with them.

Same should go for unions. Workers have a say in creating a union and in selecting its leadership. I shouldn't be able to opt out just because I lost. I still benefit from it and am part of the workforce at that company and therefore should pay. I still have free speech rights. More, in fact, than in the government taxes case because it's much easier to find a different job than it is to move to a different country entirely.

[elleng]

2. It surely CAN,

but the article and analysis well explains the 'other' side.

[unblock]

3. Yes but the 'other side' is Orwellian lies.

From the same people who insist that minorities have it much easier than white people and who insist rich white Christian men are the only ones who are really being oppressed