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As part of this crusade, two of the Fifth Circuit’s judges effectively eliminated the First Amendment right to organize a protest in a case known as Doe v. Mckesson.
Sadly, the object hit Doe and allegedly caused “injuries to his teeth, jaw, brain, and head, along with other compensable losses.”
The Supreme Court held in NAACP v. Claiborne Hardware (1982) that “civil liability may not be imposed merely because an individual belonged to a group, some members of which committed acts of violence.”
Under Elrod’s opinion, Mckesson could be held liable if the unknown rock-thrower turns out to be a member of the Ku Klux Klan who showed up for the very purpose of undermining the Black Lives Matter movement by associating them with violence.
To understand just how ridiculous Elrod’s decision is, and how egregiously she defies the Supreme Court’s caselaw, it’s helpful to start with the facts of the Claiborne case.
This is, to put it mildly, a very unusual way to read a Supreme Court opinion that held that threats to break someone’s neck can be First Amendment-protected speech, which calls for “extreme care” before targeting protest organizers, and which laid out only three very specific circumstances that “might justify” an exception.
🤖 I’m a bot that provides automatic summaries for articles:
Click here to see the summary
As part of this crusade, two of the Fifth Circuit’s judges effectively eliminated the First Amendment right to organize a protest in a case known as Doe v. Mckesson.
Sadly, the object hit Doe and allegedly caused “injuries to his teeth, jaw, brain, and head, along with other compensable losses.”
The Supreme Court held in NAACP v. Claiborne Hardware (1982) that “civil liability may not be imposed merely because an individual belonged to a group, some members of which committed acts of violence.”
Under Elrod’s opinion, Mckesson could be held liable if the unknown rock-thrower turns out to be a member of the Ku Klux Klan who showed up for the very purpose of undermining the Black Lives Matter movement by associating them with violence.
To understand just how ridiculous Elrod’s decision is, and how egregiously she defies the Supreme Court’s caselaw, it’s helpful to start with the facts of the Claiborne case.
This is, to put it mildly, a very unusual way to read a Supreme Court opinion that held that threats to break someone’s neck can be First Amendment-protected speech, which calls for “extreme care” before targeting protest organizers, and which laid out only three very specific circumstances that “might justify” an exception.
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