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US Supreme Court to wade into social media free speech firestorm

Published

11 months ago

October 31, 2023

The Supreme Court will hear an array of legal arguments involving social media’s free speech wars this term, with a series of dicey cases that could reshape how public officials and U.S. government agencies operate online.

On Tuesday, the court will hear oral arguments in the first two of those cases, both of which ask whether public officials can constitutionally block their constituents on social media — one of those cases, at its core, centers on a lakeside city manager in Michigan who decided he would block someone posting what he called “creepy” smiley emoji’s on his Facebook page, amid criticism of the manager’s COVID-19 response.

Two other cases, related to social media content moderation laws in Texas and Florida — and a third case involving communication between social media companies and Biden administration officials — will be heard later this term.

Technology cases have often left the justices grappling with the platforms at issue as much as the law at hand. Years ago, when questions over video games and First Amendment rights landed at the court, multiple justices were known to have played a violent video game to prepare to decide the case.

“We’re a court. We really don’t know about these things. You know, these are not like the nine greatest experts on the internet,” Justice Elena Kagan joked during a case last term involving Google.

Here’s what to know about the five cases this term that could reshape social media as we know it.

Public officials blocking constituents on social media

Kicking off the series of controversies, the justices Tuesday will hear a dual set of cases that ask whether public officials can block their constituents on social media.

The legal question has been bubbling up for years, and the high court previously had nearly decided it over concerns about blocks from former President Trump’s account on Twitter, the platform now known as X.

But the case was tossed as moot after Trump’s presidency ended, leaving the question unresolved for another day.

Now, the justices are poised to answer it once and for all, as they hear similar lawsuits brought against the city manager in Michigan and school board members in California, who blocked constituents after they wrote various critical comments.

The central question is whether the blocks should be considered “state action,” which makes them subject to the First Amendment.

The constituents contend that the First Amendment applies because the officials use their accounts to post about their job and update community members.

But the officials want the justices to adopt a narrower view, arguing their blocks aren’t state action because the officials weren’t exercising any actual state duty or authority.

“As this Court has recognized, an overly expansive state-action theory would be especially troublesome in the First Amendment context,” the Biden administration’s Justice Department wrote in court filings, backing both sets of local officials.

“Subjecting large amounts of the speech of government personnel to constitutional restrictions could both chill that speech and induce government employers to regulate the content of that speech more extensively. Those outcomes would undermine, not promote, First Amendment values,” the Justice Department’s brief continued.

State content moderation laws

Laws in Texas and Florida aiming to prohibit social media companies from banning users based on their political views — even if they violate platform policies — will come under the Supreme Court’s microscope later this term.

Two tech industry groups, the Computer and Communications Industry Association (CCIA) and NetChoice, challenged the laws in court, arguing that they violate private companies’ First Amendment right to decide what speech to host.

The high court agreed to hear the cases together after two lower courts, the 5th Circuit and 11th Circuit appeals courts, had conflicting opinions on blocking and upholding the similar laws.

The 11th Circuit upheld a block on major provisions in Florida’s law, siding with the tech industry groups that brought the case. But the 5th Circuit reached the opposite conclusion in the Texas case, writing that the First Amendment doesn’t guarantee corporations the “unenumerated right to muzzle speech.”

Biden’s Justice Department signaled support for the tech groups, writing in an amicus brief that the Supreme Court should overturn the 5th Circuit’s decision to uphold the Texas law.

Biden administration’s contacts with social media companies

The Supreme Court said earlier this month that it would consider a social media censorship case brought against Biden administration officials, after pausing an injunction ordered by the 5th Circuit appeals court until the justices decide the case on its merits.

Two attorneys general in Missouri and Louisiana brought the case, claiming the Biden administration’s efforts to curb misinformation online — particularly when it comes to the COVID-19 vaccine — by coordinating with social media companies is tantamount to a “campaign of censorship” by the government.

A federal judge sided with them in July, blocking government officials from contacting social media companies over “any manner the removal, deletion, suppression, or reduction of content containing protected free speech posted on social-media platforms.”

The appeals court sharply narrowed that ruling but still found that several agencies — including the White House, FBI and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — likely violated the First Amendment by urging social media companies to take down specific content.

The Supreme Court issued the stay of the 5th Circuit’s ruling over the objection of Justices Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch.

“At this time in the history of our country, what the Court has done, I fear, will be seen by some as giving the Government a green light to use heavy-handed tactics to skew the presentation of views on the medium that increasingly dominates the dissemination of news,” Alito wrote in his dissenting opinion. “That is most unfortunate.”

Any decision in the case could significantly change how false or misleading social media content is moderated — potentially ahead of the 2024 presidential election.

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Two youths arrested after emergency alert issued in New Brunswick

Published

4 hours ago

September 17, 2024

Anne Joseph

MONCTON, N.B. – New Brunswick RCMP say two youths have been arrested after an emergency alert was issued Monday evening about someone carrying a gun in the province’s southeast.

Caledonia Region Mounties say they were first called out to Main Street in the community of Salisbury around 7 p.m. on reports of a shooting.

A 48-year-old man was found at the scene suffering from gunshot wounds and he was rushed to hospital with non-life-threatening injuries.

Police say in the interest of public safety, they issued an Alert Ready message at 8:15 p.m. for someone driving a silver Ford F-150 pickup truck and reportedly carrying a firearm with dangerous intent in the Salisbury and Moncton area.

Two youths were arrested without incident later in the evening in Salisbury, and the alert was cancelled just after midnight Tuesday.

Police are still looking for the silver pickup truck, covered in mud, with possible Nova Scotia licence plate HDC 958. They now confirm the truck was stolen from Central Blissville.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 16, 2024.

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World Junior Girls Golf Championship coming to Toronto-area golf course

Published

4 hours ago

September 16, 2024

Anne Joseph

MISSISSAUGA, Ont. – Golf Canada has set an impressive stretch goal of having 30 professional golfers at the highest levels of the sport by 2032.

The World Junior Girls Golf Championship is a huge part of that target.

Credit Valley Golf and Country Club will host the international tournament from Sept. 30 to Oct. 5, with 24 teams representing 23 nations — Canada gets two squads — competing. Lindsay McGrath, a 17-year-old golfer from Oakville, Ont., said she’s excited to be representing Canada and continue to develop her game.

“I’m really grateful to be here,” said McGrath on Monday after a news conference in Credit Valley’s clubhouse in Mississauga, Ont. “It’s just such an awesome feeling being here and representing our country, wearing all the logos and being on Team Canada.

“I’ve always wanted to play in this tournament, so it’s really special to me.”

McGrath will be joined by Nobelle Park of Oakville, Ont., and Eileen Park of Red Deer, Alta., on Team Canada 2. All three earned their places through a qualifying tournament last month.

“I love my teammates so much,” said McGrath. “I know Nobelle and Eileen very well. I’m just so excited to be with them. We have such a great relationship.”

Shauna Liu of Maple, Ont., Calgary’s Aphrodite Deng and Clairey Lin make up Team Canada 2. Liu earned her exemption following her win at the 2024 Canadian Junior Girls Championship while Deng earned her exemption as being the low eligible Canadian on the world amateur golf ranking as of Aug. 7.

Deng was No. 175 at the time, she has since improved to No. 171 and is Canada’s lowest-ranked player.

“I think it’s a really great opportunity,” said Liu. “We don’t really get that many opportunities to play with people from across the world, so it’s really great to meet new people and play with them.

“It’s great to see maybe how they play and take parts from their game that we might also implement our own games.”

Golf Canada founded the World Junior Girls Golf Championship in 2014 to fill a void in women’s international competition and help grow its own homegrown talent. The hosts won for the first time last year when Vancouver’s Anna Huang, Toronto’s Vanessa Borovilos and Vancouver’s Vanessa Zhang won team gold and Huang earned individual silver.

Medallists who have gone on to win on the LPGA Tour include Brooke Henderson of Smiths Falls, Ont., who was fourth in the individual competition at the inaugural tournament. She was on Canada’s bronze-medal team in 2014 with Selena Costabile of Thornhill, Ont., and Calgary’s Jaclyn Lee.

Other notable competitors who went on to become LPGA Tour winners include Angel Yin and Megan Khang of the United States, as well as Yuka Saso of the Philippines, Sweden’s Linn Grant and Atthaya Thitikul of Thailand.

“It’s not if, it’s when they’re going to be on the LPGA Tour,” said Garrett Ball, Golf Canada’s chief operating officer, of how Canada’s golfers in the World Junior Girls Championship can be part of the organization’s goal to have 30 pros in the LPGA and PGA Tours by 2032.

“Events like this, like the She Plays Golf festival that we launched two years ago, and then the CPKC Women’s Open exemptions that we utilize to bring in our national team athletes and get the experience has been important in that pathway.”

The individual winner of the World Junior Girls Golf Championship will earn a berth in next year’s CPKC Women’s Open at nearby Mississaugua Golf and Country Club.

Both clubs, as well as former RBC Canadian Open host site Glen Abbey Golf Club, were devastated by heavy rains through June and July as the Greater Toronto Area had its wettest summer in recorded history.

Jason Hanna, the chief operating officer of Credit Valley Golf and Country Club, said that he has seen the Credit River flood so badly that it affected the course’s playability a handful of times over his nearly two decades with the club.

Staff and members alike came together to clean up the course after the flooding was over, with hundreds of people coming together to make the club playable again.

“You had to show up, bring your own rake, bring your own shovel, bring your own gloves, and then we’d take them down to the golf course, assign them to areas where they would work, and then we would do a big barbecue down at the halfway house,” said Hanna. “We got guys, like, 80 years old, putting in eight-hour days down there, working away.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 16, 2024.

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Purple place: Mets unveil the new Grimace seat at Citi Field

Published

5 hours ago

September 16, 2024

Anne Joseph

NEW YORK (AP) — Fenway Park has the Ted Williams seat. And now Citi Field has the Grimace seat.

The kid-friendly McDonald’s character made another appearance at the ballpark Monday, when the New York Mets unveiled a commemorative purple seat in section 302 to honor “his special connection to Mets fans.”

Wearing his pear-shaped purple costume and a baseball glove on backwards, Grimace threw out a funny-looking first pitch — as best he could with those furry fingers and short arms — before New York beat the Miami Marlins at Citi Field on June 12.

That victory began a seven-game winning streak, and Grimace the Mets’ good-luck charm soon went viral, taking on a life of its own online.

New York is 53-31 since June 12, the best record in the majors during that span. The Mets were tied with rival Atlanta for the last National League playoff spot as they opened their final homestand of the season Monday night against Washington.

The new Grimace seat in the second deck in right field — located in row 6, seat 12 to signify 6/12 on the calendar — was brought into the Shannon Forde press conference room Monday afternoon. The character posed next to the chair and with fans who strolled into the room.

The seat is available for purchase for each of the Mets’ remaining home games.

“It’s been great to see how our fanbase created the Grimace phenomenon following his first pitch in June and in the months since,” Mets senior vice president of partnerships Brenden Mallette said in a news release. “As we explored how to further capture the magic of this moment and celebrate our new celebrity fan, installing a commemorative seat ahead of fan appreciation weekend felt like the perfect way to give something back to the fans in a fun and unique way.”

Up in Boston, the famous Ted Williams seat is painted bright red among rows of green chairs deep in the right-field stands at Fenway Park to mark where a reported 502-foot homer hit by the Hall of Fame slugger landed in June 1946.

So, does this catapult Grimace into Splendid Splinter territory?

“I don’t know if we put him on the same level,” Mets executive vice president and chief marketing officer Andy Goldberg said with a grin.

“It’s just been a fun year, and at the same time, we’ve been playing great ball. Ever since the end of May, we have been crushing it,” he explained. “So I think that added to the mystique.”

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