When we talk about the demographics of our world, we use numbers in the millions or billions. It's hard to get your head around them. Watch this video. It solves that problem.
Monday, November 9, 2009
Tuesday, November 3, 2009
Bad First Amendment Decision
Don't make a silent, one second Nazi salute to the chair of a public meeting in California, Nevada, Oregon, Idaho, Washington, Arizona, Montana, Alaska, Hawaii, Guam or the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands because, if you do, public officials who don't like you or your message may eject you from the meeting, put you in handcuffs and haul you off to jail, says a panel of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals today in a case I have been litigating for the past seven years.
It doesn't matter that almost nobody saw the salute and the meeting droned on without a pause before an offended city council member (and then I and co-counsel, Kate Wells) made a federal case out of it. We thought we were on solid ground since our client, Robert Norse, didn't disrupt the Santa Cruz City Council meeting he was removed from and we had video to prove it.
We also thought the law was on our side. First Amendment law can be murky at times but until now nothing has been clearer than the principle that government cannot suppress an idea because it doesn't like the speaker or the message. And previous Ninth Circuit decisions did not allow expulsions from public meetings without a disruption.
After reading the contorted reasoning of the majority, take a look at the sensible dissent. See Norse v. City of Santa Cruz, filed November 3, 2009 here: http://www.ca9.uscourts.gov/opinions/
[update] On March 12, 2010, the Ninth Circuit ordered review of this case by an en banc panel. On December 15, 2010, the en banc panel voted 11-0 to reverse the decision of the district court and remand the case for trial. For a link to the court's decision, go here: http://www.firstamendmentcenter.org/news.aspx?id=23703
Here's the video of the incident submitted into evidence.
It doesn't matter that almost nobody saw the salute and the meeting droned on without a pause before an offended city council member (and then I and co-counsel, Kate Wells) made a federal case out of it. We thought we were on solid ground since our client, Robert Norse, didn't disrupt the Santa Cruz City Council meeting he was removed from and we had video to prove it.
We also thought the law was on our side. First Amendment law can be murky at times but until now nothing has been clearer than the principle that government cannot suppress an idea because it doesn't like the speaker or the message. And previous Ninth Circuit decisions did not allow expulsions from public meetings without a disruption.
After reading the contorted reasoning of the majority, take a look at the sensible dissent. See Norse v. City of Santa Cruz, filed November 3, 2009 here: http://www.ca9.uscourts.gov/opinions/
[update] On March 12, 2010, the Ninth Circuit ordered review of this case by an en banc panel. On December 15, 2010, the en banc panel voted 11-0 to reverse the decision of the district court and remand the case for trial. For a link to the court's decision, go here: http://www.firstamendmentcenter.org/news.aspx?id=23703
Here's the video of the incident submitted into evidence.
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