4 ms·

So your reading of the First Amendment is that if I'm hosting a party and somebody starts belligerently accusing me of trying to steal their wife, I can't kick

by chc 6y ago

So your reading of the First Amendment is that if I'm hosting a party and somebody starts belligerently accusing me of trying to steal their wife, I can't kick them out or else the First Amendment will no longer protect me from government censorship? I don't think that's a common interpretation of how the law works. The First Amendment is generally held to protect you from government restraint or retaliation, but not private restraint or retaliation, and having retaliated against someone for speech you find objectionable is not generally held to remove your Constitutional rights.

kls 6y ago
To clarify, as I read this situation, it would be more analogous to you host a party, someone at your party tells someone else that I killed a person, it is a factually untrue statement, it ends up having real world ramifications for me. I go to you and ask who it was and you say I am not going to tell you, so I go to the government and petition my right to not be slandered and then you say well my party is protected by this first amendment law, I will not tell you or the government who it was. In this case my being slandered trumps and terminates (civilly) your and your guests free speech rights. I should get the persons name and I walk away going what a hypocrite (to be clear not real you personally, but imaginary you at our imaginary party). Which is what I was expressing in my first post, I think they are being hypocritical in using the law as a shield. They don't want a law that restrains government applied to them, but they want to use a law applied against the government to block a private party from seeking redress from harm.