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Judge says Education Dept partisan out-of-office emails violated First Amendment
- alfiedotwtf 11mo agoIs a judgement worth the paper it’s written on when it’s ignored with zero consequences?
- Normal_gaussian 11mo agoFor other parts of the world looking in, yes.
- ethbr1 11mo agoWhy would it be ignored? Say what you want about the executive branch trying to weasel out of things and get the Supreme Court to lift holds, but they've so far been unwilling to out and out disobey finalized court orders.
- c420 11mo ago'We lack the power': Justice Barrett basically admits SCOTUS can do nothing if Trump violates rulings https://lawandcrime.com/supreme-court/we-lack-the-power-justice-barrett-basically-admits-scotus-can-do-nothing-if-trump-violates-rulings/ https://lawandcrime.com/supreme-court/we-lack-the-power-just...
- pfdietz 11mo agoAll they need to do is rule that violation of court orders is not protected by qualified immunity from civil lawsuits, a principle SCOTUS invented itself.
- ocdtrekkie 11mo agoI suspect many of the more ridiculous rulings come less from Roberts agreeing with Trump, and more fear of actually placing Trump in a position to straight ignore the court, which he will do. There is likely a pragmatic view that if they appear to remain relevant they might continue to have some power, even though they already don't.
- ethbr1 11mo agoIt would have precedent in the Supreme Court... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marbury_v._Madison#Political_dilemma https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marbury_v._Madison#Political_d...
- Larrikin 11mo agoThey could have let him go to jail before the election instead of ruling that the president is a king.
- ethbr1 11mo agoThere's pros and cons to that decision. At the very least, it's not great to send an ex-president who still has substantial support to prison while same ex-president is also spouting conspiracy theories about election fraud and deep state. That doesn't end well. On the other hand, a strong executive is a feature of the American political system and has its benefits. Imho, my hope is that the Supreme Court punted on that one by deliberately leaving "official acts of office" vague. And that if push came to shove, election related activities would be defined as not part of presidential duties.
- ocdtrekkie 11mo agoI think this is a hindsight is 20/20 issue. In 2021, we really should've prosecuted Trump and sent him to prison. We wouldn't be dealing with the incredible litany of crimes and economic damage we deal with now if we had. But in 2021, I don't think anyone seriously imagined Trump would actually be President again, and if you don't think he'll actually have any power, yeah, in 2021 it probably looked like a bad optics thing that probably wouldn't make any positive impact to do. And not for nothing, we were also still very much in the middle of COVID-19 as an active crisis.
- usrusr 11mo agoTies those who ignore it closer to the group in power: more to lose when they lose it. Every little erosion of law adherence creates more of that cheap loyalty substitute.
- add-sub-mul-div 11mo agoNot every failure is meaningful on its own but it would at least spiritually be a very different country today if they wasn't such a pattern of sustained opposition and losing in the courts going back 2017.
- binarymax 11mo agoThey are adding up. They can ignore them, and when they are out of office, the reckoning will come.
- ocdtrekkie 11mo agoNot for the President, unfortunately. Supreme Court precedent has effectively set him as immune from prosecution, and it's not like at his age he'd serve much time anyways. I expect a lot of his administration to spend their latter years in jail though. Siding with him has basically never paid off for anyone.
- staticautomatic 11mo agoThere’s always treason
- jalapenos 11mo agoIt's treason, then...
- phatskat 11mo ago> Siding with him has basically never paid off for anyone. Which is the wildest part. Even before his first administration became a revolving door, he’s pretty much always tossed people aside. I almost believe there are people in his inner circle that are “safe”, but then he (the president of the United States) did once rape his own wife - the same one he pushed down a flight of stairs
- brian-armstrong 11mo agoThat's why they're not leaving office. Check out Venezuela for a preview of what's in store for the US.
- jfengel 11mo agoThey won't ignore it. They'll comply with replacing the partisan message, and move on to dozens of other violations. It's not so much the judgments as that the courts can't keep up.
- VonGuard 11mo ago[flagged]
- add-sub-mul-div 11mo agoWe thought Betsy Devos was rock bottom but then 47 told his 45 past self, "hold my beer."
- hackingonempty 11mo agoShe is doing a fine job, being greatly assisted by A1. A1 also assists the flavor of steaks and burgers.
- ch2026 11mo agoThe point is they wanted to eliminate the department entirely, but couldn’t, so installed the most inept person possible. Same is true for nearly every other appointment.
- FridayoLeary 11mo ago[flagged]
- ohyoutravel 11mo agoFirst Amendment is quite important.
- FridayoLeary 11mo agoOf course it is, and the union people must be delighted and that's fine with me. But come on. This is hardly the great poster child of First Amendment privileges. This is a departmental squabble that has been allowed to balloon way out of proportion. I can't imagine a more irrelevant affirmation of constitutional rights.
- platinumrad 11mo agoSo you would be okay with your employer putting words in your mouth?
- pfdietz 11mo agoIn what way is a blatant 1st amendment violation not a great poster child here? Because it sticks in your craw?
- kyralis 11mo agoShould we only correct violations that would qualify as a "great poster child," then? Let them all fly if they're not sufficiently big and flashy for you? Perhaps we should ignore theft that doesn't meet your personal financial bar, too?
- ethbr1 11mo agoWhen you are a backstabbing administration who demands yes-people, you have difficulty attracting qualified candidates. As a result, you have incompetent people running things. People who do things like violate federal law because they're too dumb to think before they act to curry favor. It's honestly been fascinating watching the people with a modicum of self preservation sense (Marco Rubio) versus those who don't think actions will come back to bite them (Linda McMahon, Pete Hegseth, Kristi Noem). From a purely practical perspective, you'd have to be stupid not to evaluate decisions with an eye towards "Will I be prosecuted at a future date for this?" in this administration.
- megamike 11mo ago“the First Amendment is a cheap thing if all it provides is the assurance that one may say what a current majority is willing to hear.” Charles Rembar
- getcthbf67 11mo agoAs a contrararianI'm silenced a lot. How do you suggest alignment can happen if more persuasive dissenting voices are allowed to be heard?
- michael_michael 11mo agoSilenced by whom?
- theendisney 11mo agoEven the smallest authority may want to force others back in line.
- ceejayoz 11mo ago“Your ideas suck and you should stop espousing them” is free speech too.
- getcthbf67 11mo agoNot when it's followed by a blocking of the account being disagreed with.
- ceejayoz 11mo agoBullshit. I have the right to free association, too. I am not required to let you interact with me; I can block you on Twitter just as I can lock you out of my house.
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- nine_zeros 11mo ago[dead]
- tptacek 11mo agoIt's the right call, but really, those notices were probably doing the administration more harm than good. One of the sweatier message campaigns we've seen in the recent history of US politics.
- wredcoll 11mo agoI mean, you'd think so, but the past dozen years have repeatedly demonstrated that there's quite a few people who don't seem to realize that this sort of thing is, in fact, bad.
- tantalor 11mo agoI think you overestimate how anyone cares very much, in comparison to more important matters.
- jfengel 11mo agoI suppose the First Amendment takes precedence over the Hatch Act, but it's more blatantly a violation of the latter.
- SilverElfin 11mo agoI find partisan messaging on government sites to be sleazy. But also I don’t understand how this is a violation of government employees’ rights. When people are employees of the government, they don’t have rights to use the resources of their job as if they own the same resources as a private citizen. Their speech is restricted to some degree as part of doing their job, and they are employed to do their agency’s bidding. How is their private right to free speech violated here?
- apical_dendrite 11mo agoThis is not a case where the government is telling employees that they cannot say certain things while on the job. That would be reasonable (see the Hatch Act, for instance, which the Trump administration violates constantly). It is compelled speech. They are sending out a message from that person without that person's knowledge or consent. The first amendment prohibits the government from forcing someone to say something that they do not want to say. That is true even for government employees (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Janus_v._AFSCME https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Janus_v._AFSCME)
- solid_fuel 11mo ago> Their speech is restricted to some degree as part of doing their job There are at least two kinds of speech restriction - not being allowed to say something, and being compelled to say something. To analogize, it's one thing to be told "you're not allowed to rant about the CEO on social media". It's another thing entirely to be told "you have to make 3 posts a day about how great the CEO is". These federal employees were not just restricted from publicly criticizing the administration - which is fairly typical for federal employees - but they also had their out of office messages changed without consent to point partisan blame for the current shutdown. That's essentially compelled speech, especially since Out Of Office messages still include the employee's name as the From line.
- terminalshort 11mo ago[flagged]
- terminalshort 11mo agoI fundamentally don't understand the rights of government employees. They are supposedly there to execute the will of the political branch that controls them whether or not they agree with it, which is why they are given immunity from firing by each incoming administration. So how do they also have the right to personalized communication from their work email addresses (a right that no private sector employee has)? How can they have the right to exercise government authority without being democratically elected, or at least accountable for their actions to someone who is?
- icedrop 11mo agoCan you explain what you mean, in more direct or simpler terms?
- terminalshort 11mo agoSo the judge's quote from the article is "and they certainly do not sign up to be a billboard for any given administration's partisan views." I thought that's exactly what you signed up for when you become a government employee.
- carefulfungi 11mo ago"... to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States." I missed the part where government service wasn't about upholding and implementing the law but was instead about support for a particular party.
- jalapenos 11mo agoIt was probably in the penumbras
- raddan 11mo agoThere’s a difference between being required to perform the normal functions of the government and being required to espouse a political philosophy. The Hatch Act makes it clear that you can have a political opinion, but that it occurs on your own time. So the rationale of the court is “nobody is allowed to use their office for politics” and “by putting words in government employee mouths, their right to free speech is being abridged.” 5 U.S.C. § 7323(a)(1): “An employee may take an active part in political management or in political campaigns, except an employee may not — (1) use his official authority or influence for the purpose of interfering with or affecting the result of an election.” There’s a lot more after that. https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/5/7323 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/5/7323
- dataflow 11mo agoIs there no federal defamation law that could apply here? I would've thought this would fall under something like that, rather than 1A. Even without 1A, you could still be defaming someone by misrepresenting that they hold a certain view, right? I know states have laws against this regardless of the constitution, but is there no such thing at the federal level?
- tantalor 11mo agoOnly individual people can be defamed, not political parties. Plus what is being asserted is not really a factual statement so it can't be a lie. Politicians are allowed to say things like "my opponent believes such and such".
- anonymouskimmer 11mo agoI think the idea of the comment you replied to is that the people whose out-of-office messages these appear to be are being defamed through the appearance of being partisan, or more strongly through the appearance of violating the Hatch act.
- tantalor 11mo agoOh gotcha. If they could show a harm, like financial loss, then it could be. I think a close analogy would be if I send a letter, but sign your name. If a reasonable person would think you wrote the letter, then this might qualify as defamation. IANAL
- anonymouskimmer 11mo ago> If they could show a harm, like financial loss, then it could be. IANAL, but I think directly writing a Hatch act violation on behalf of a person would fall under defamation per se, not defamation per quod, and thus harm would not have to be demonstrated. https://www.findlaw.com/injury/torts-and-personal-injuries/what-is-defamation-per-se.html https://www.findlaw.com/injury/torts-and-personal-injuries/w...