NP, it’s a weird body of law

No, because when the government speaks, it is allowed to only present one message. That’s why although the government can’t ban racist speech, it can engage in tolerant speech without also having to engage in racist speech. That’s also why according to the Supreme Court, a state can ban confederate license plates. …

I’m gonna assume the fee is only paid if the license plate is approved...

Under Walker v. Sons of Confederate Veterans, license plates are government speech, so the state can deny his request. This is the same case

You don’t have to imagine it: Just look at how they bend over backwards to support stop and frisk, which is essentially “gun grabbing” committed against black people

They don’t all vote republican....many libertarians vote libertarian.

The original commenter said that the South Park guys are basically just trump supporters. People who refuse to vote for Hillary Clinton to stop Donald Trump are wrong, not trump supporters.

Ignoring the fact that you’re speaking to a libertarian who DID vote for Hillary, many libertarians are believers in the “lesser of two evils is still evil” view.

Yes that’s a reference to Trump’s immigration/deportation policies

Trump represents a big government police state that lumps racial and ethnic groups together, talking about the culture of “us” versus “them.” He favors a massive government expansion to prevent people from living where they want to live and rounding up those on the wrong side of an arbitrary line. He also opposed…

Fuck the Democratic Party. Fuck you for nominating the only fucking candidate who’s disliked and distrusted enough to lose to Donald Fucking Trump. Fuck.

Eugene Volokh looked at this case a while ago. As far as the fraternity or its members, the answer seems to be.....eh. I think the strongest case for them might be the false allegation that this took place as part of an initiation ceremony, which would imply that many (or most) of the fraternity’s members knew or…

.....yes. Any threat that a reasonable person wouldn’t take to be serious (and possibly any threat that the speaker doesn’t intend to be a threat; the Supreme Court has very unhelpfully declined to answer that question) is protected by the First Amendment and cannot be criminalized. If reasonable people would take…

Threatening to shoot the president as a form of political hyperbole is protected by the first amendment (Watts v. United States), so I suspect that*jokingly* threatening to shoot the president (especially to express your dislike of her) falls under the same banner

It’s not really similar to the “close your legs defense” because 1) it’s not a theory of innocence and 2) the duty to mitigate damages is common in civil law, and the same reasoning is easily applicable to criminal restitution

I know that this particular case lends itself to snarky comments like this, but the duty to mitigate damages is actually common in all sorts of cases. It usually comes up in contract and tort cases, but I don’t know of any reason why it wouldn’t also apply to criminal restitution

Hate speech has no meaning in American law. Legally speaking, there is no such category

I kinda wish they’d stayed out of it, because now everybody is going to treat this as if it’s some big case about the constitutional rights of trans people, while in reality it’s a much narrower question of administrative law and statutory interpretation. Seriously, this is all they’re deciding:

That’s true, and once the prosecution stipulated that she attacked, there was no chance. Seems like a classic case of trying to find someone/anyone to punish when a tragedy happens

That’s what I’m saying. The deprivation of liberty charge is a real stretch, but the murder charge is even more of a stretch because they also have the problem of a weak proximate cause case