{"id":13523,"date":"2024-04-29T19:31:44","date_gmt":"2024-04-29T19:31:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/?p=13523"},"modified":"2024-04-29T19:31:45","modified_gmt":"2024-04-29T19:31:45","slug":"the-supreme-court-effectively-abolishes-the-right-to-mass-protest-in-three-us-states","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/?p=13523","title":{"rendered":"The Supreme Court effectively abolishes the right to mass protest in three US states"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

“The Supreme Court<\/a> announced..that it will not hear Mckesson v. Doe<\/em><\/a>. The decision not to hear Mckesson<\/em> leaves in place a lower court decision that effectively eliminated the right to organize a mass protest<\/a> in the states of Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Under that lower court decision, a protest organizer faces potentially ruinous financial consequences if a single attendee at a mass protest commits an illegal act.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is possible that this outcome will be temporary. The Court did not embrace the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit\u2019s decision attacking the First Amendment right to protest, but it did not reverse it either. That means that, at least for now, the Fifth Circuit\u2019s decision is the law in much of the American South.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For the past several years, the Fifth Circuit has engaged in a crusade against DeRay Mckesson<\/a>, a prominent figure within the Black Lives Matter<\/a> movement who organized a protest near a Baton Rouge police station in 2016.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The facts of the Mckesson <\/em>case are, unfortunately, quite tragic. Mckesson helped organize the Baton Rouge protest following the fatal police shooting of Alton Sterling<\/a>. During that protest, an unknown individual threw a rock or similar object at a police officer, the plaintiff in the Mckesson <\/em>case who is identified only as \u201cOfficer John Doe.\u201d Sadly, the officer was struck in the face and, according to one court, suffered \u201cinjuries to his teeth, jaw, brain, and head<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Everyone agrees that this rock was not thrown by Mckesson, however. And the Supreme Court held in NAACP v. Claiborne Hardware<\/em><\/a> (1982) that protest leaders cannot be held liable for the violent actions of a protest participant, absent unusual circumstances that are not present in the Mckesson<\/em> case \u2014 such as if Mckesson had \u201cauthorized, directed, or ratified\u201d the decision to throw the rock.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Indeed, as Justice Sonia Sotomayor points out in a brief opinion<\/a> accompanying the Court\u2019s decision not to hear Mckesson<\/em>, the Court recently reaffirmed the strong First Amendment protections enjoyed by people like Mckesson in Counterman v. Colorado<\/em><\/a> (2023). That decision held that the First Amendment \u201cprecludes punishment\u201d for inciting violent action \u201cunless the speaker\u2019s words were \u2018intended\u2019 (not just likely) to produce imminent disorder.\u201d”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

https:\/\/www.vox.com\/scotus\/24080080\/supreme-court-mckesson-doe-first-amendment-protest-black-lives-matter<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“The Supreme Court announced..that it will not hear Mckesson v. Doe. The decision not to hear Mckesson leaves in place a lower court decision that effectively eliminated the right to organize a mass protest in the states of Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas.
\nUnder that lower court decision, a protest organizer faces potentially ruinous financial consequences if a single attendee at a mass protest commits an illegal act.<\/p>\n

It is possible that this outcome will be temporary. The Court did not embrace the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit\u2019s decision attacking the First Amendment right to protest, but it did not reverse it either. That means that, at least for now, the Fifth Circuit\u2019s decision is the law in much of the American South.<\/p>\n

For the past several years, the Fifth Circuit has engaged in a crusade against DeRay Mckesson, a prominent figure within the Black Lives Matter movement who organized a protest near a Baton Rouge police station in 2016.<\/p>\n

The facts of the Mckesson case are, unfortunately, quite tragic. Mckesson helped organize the Baton Rouge protest following the fatal police shooting of Alton Sterling. During that protest, an unknown individual threw a rock or similar object at a police officer, the plaintiff in the Mckesson case who is identified only as \u201cOfficer John Doe.\u201d Sadly, the officer was struck in the face and, according to one court, suffered \u201cinjuries to his teeth, jaw, brain, and head.\u201d<\/p>\n

Everyone agrees that this rock was not thrown by Mckesson, however. And the Supreme Court held in NAACP v. Claiborne Hardware (1982) that protest leaders cannot be held liable for the violent actions of a protest participant, absent unusual circumstances that are not present in the Mckesson case \u2014 such as if Mckesson had \u201cauthorized, directed, or ratified\u201d the decision to throw the rock.<\/p>\n

Indeed, as Justice Sonia Sotomayor points out in a brief opinion accompanying the Court\u2019s decision not to hear Mckesson, the Court recently reaffirmed the strong First Amendment protections enjoyed by people like Mckesson in Counterman v. Colorado (2023). That decision held that the First Amendment \u201cprecludes punishment\u201d for inciting violent action \u201cunless the speaker\u2019s words were \u2018intended\u2019 (not just likely) to produce imminent disorder.\u201d”<\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.vox.com\/scotus\/24080080\/supreme-court-mckesson-doe-first-amendment-protest-black-lives-matter<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[941,942,362,850,536,528],"class_list":["post-13523","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-article-share","tag-protest","tag-protesting","tag-protests","tag-right-to-protest","tag-rights","tag-supreme-court"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13523","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13523"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13523\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13524,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13523\/revisions\/13524"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13523"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13523"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13523"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}