Justice Clarence Thomas Suggests SCOTUS Will 'Soon Have No Choice' But to Rein in Ability of 'Domina

[Calista241]

Source: Law & Crime

Justice Clarence Thomas Suggests SCOTUS Will ‘Soon Have No Choice’ But to Rein in Ability of ‘Dominant Digital Platforms’ to Moderate Speech Online


The Supreme Court of the United States on Monday put an end to a lawsuit that challenged then-President Donald Trump’s then-ability to block his critics on his personal Twitter account. The justices unanimously vacated a lower court’s decision, which held that Trump’s actions violated the First Amendment. The high court ordered the case dismissed as moot in light of the fact that the former president has been permanently banned from Twitter. But more significantly, Justice Clarence Thomas became the first member of the high court to endorse a radical new view of social media companies that been steadily gaining steam among conservatives.

Writing a separate concurrence that was not joined by any of the other eight justices, Thomas suggested that social media companies like Twitter and Facebook had become too powerful and should be stripped of their First Amendment rights to moderate speech on their websites.

“Today’s digital platforms provide avenues for historically unprecedented amounts of speech, including speech by government actors. Also unprecedented, however, is control of so much speech in the hands of a few private parties,” Thomas wrote. “We will soon have no choice but to address how our legal doctrines apply to highly concentrated, privately owned information infrastructure such as digital platforms.”

Read more: https://lawandcrime.com/supreme-court/justice-clarence-thomas-suggests-scotus-will-soon-have-no-choice-but-to-rein-in-ability-of-dominant-digital-platforms-to-moderate-speech-online/?utm_source=mostpopular

[msongs]

1. private companies there mr thomas. white supremacists will still find their way to

publicity. and btw the first amendment only applies to government.

[Calista241]

2. The first amendment only applies to government *right now*

The Supreme Court can change that in any number of ways.

[sop]

3. Apparently, Clarence believes in breaking up media conglomerates and ownership consolidation:

"Also unprecedented, however, is control of so much speech in the hands of a few private parties...We will soon have no choice but to address how our legal doctrines apply to highly concentrated, privately owned information infrastructure...”

[pepperbear]

4. So he advocates for some semblence of the Fairness Doctrine again? n/t

[mathematic]

15. You're defending Milo Yiannopoulos? That's an interesting take

I think most people here would agree that private organizations have the right to not associate with toxic hate mongers like him.

[niyad]

18. Have the swallows come back this year?

[Hugh_Lebowski]

5. Good luck with that. In effect, what CT is calling 'speech', in this context, is actually 'product'

that is owned by the company to whom the user voluntarily provided that particular collection of bytes.

Just like you have no 'right' to make the local newspaper print your LTTE, neither do you have any 'right' to force these corporations to distribute the bytes you generated anywhere apart from where they feel like doing so.

[DallasNE]

31. Good Point On "Product" n/t

[Mysterian]

6. Thomas is a cancer on the Supreme Court

He is utterly corrupt and immoral.

[ashredux]

9. He ain't that smart either..... 🥴

[brush]

28. Is he advocating, somewhat deceptively, that trump be reeinstated on twitter?

Saying it in legalese kind of hides his intention.

[Mysterian]

7. No problemo!

In the fantastical world of the bizarro U.S. Supreme Court, corporations can be people and money can be speech! The magical judges use their alchemy in mysterious ways to serve the wealthy rulers.

[greenjar_01]

8. In US, the Domina reins you in!

[LiberalFighter]

10. But not for print media?

[Voltaire2]

12. So he's now a socialist?

[turbinetree]

13. Well, Clarence how did the Citizens United thingy go, oh yeah you said money is free speech

and corporations are a human being .......and your sitting on a court and exactly what is your wife doing at some conservative outfits that supported attack on the capital......

https://abovethelaw.com/2021/01/what-ginni-thomas-yes-wife-of-clarence-really-did-to-support-the-siege-on-the-capital/

[bringthePaine]

14. wow, refuKKKchickens LOOOOOVE to legislate from the bench! fuck Uncle Thomas...

[hadEnuf]

16. Funny that you weren't saying this all the while that the GOP was dominating the digital platforms,

Clarence, you unfit partisan prick.

Now that your right wing platforms have been reduced to the likes of QAnon and other ludicrous gibberish you want to moderate sane speech on-line.

GFY Clarence.

[niyad]

17. It speaks? I thought it basically just occupied a chair.

[BumRushDaShow]

19. He actually wrote a recent majority opinion for the court

and it was longer than his usual, almost 30 years of 1-pagers.

(can't remember what the case was but it was posted about on DU within the past couple months)

[niyad]

21. Astonishing. He must be trying to upgrade his image.

[FBaggins]

24. I'm not sure where you got that impression

He's written lots of long opinions (and a significant number of dissents - including almost 30 where he was the sole dissenting voice). His dissent today in the Google case was about 20 pages.

He just doesn't ask many questions during oral arguments.

The knock on Thomas is less that he writes short opinions. It's more that he writes few majority opinions of much significance... because he rarely represents the midpoint of the court - or even the midpoint of the conservative side of the court. He's well to the right of all but Scalia - so he's far more likely to write that lone dissent or a concurring opinion on a case with a larger majority unwilling to reach as far to the right as he would like.

[BumRushDaShow]

25. This is only recently

Before Scalia bought the farm, he was the puppet in the chair. I wish I could find it, but I read a whole critique article about his time on the court up to the time of the article and I'm not saying he isn't a dissenter (in many cases he has been the lone one), but that he was generally phoning it in.

With the number of associates who have retired or died while he was on the court, he is now the most senior (in terms of years on the court, with Breyer, the 2nd longest). It's long past time that he acted like it, although IMHO, it's time for him to go.

[FBaggins]

30. That isn't true

I just looked at all of his majority opinions for the two years prior to Scalia's passing. One was seven pages long... but the rest were a dozen or more pages.

You'll often find a single-paragraph dissent - as with DIRECTV, Inc. v. Imburgia saying essentially "I continue to believe that that Federal Arbitration Act does not apply to state courts", but it simply isn't true that he was just a "puppet in the chair" except to the extent that he didn't ask questions. In fact, he writes more total opinions than any of the other justices - often more than twice as many.

What you're probably thinking of is articles like: https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/clarence-thomass-twenty-five-years-without-footprints that points out that he's had little impact on the court because his opinion rarely controls on significant matters... and is in the majority less often than any other justice.

[BumRushDaShow]

39. IMHO

he (and particularly his loon wife) spends more time on the road promoting RW loon propaganda than even serving as the court contrarian. Even Scalia had a handful of interesting focuses (notably on the 4th Amendment).

He was nominated to be the replacement for Thurgood Marshall, and as a literal polar opposite of Marshall in terms of intellectual depth and belief in the values of the U.S. Constitution, spent the past 30 years as a bitter and vindictive waste of a seat.

[Captain Zero]

37. A clerk probably wrote it for him, if it was longer than usual.

nt

[BumRushDaShow]

38. Well that too...

[Marie Marie]

32. Well, at least we know that he was awake for a moment.

I'm sure after writing that, he needed a nap.

[BumRushDaShow]

40. ...

[AZLD4Candidate]

22. Someone needs to tell Justice Oops that the 1st amendment applies to Congress

And not private forums. Or just he not believe in Capitalism and the Free Market to regulate itself.

I thought only Communist and Fascist countries used government to regulate speech.

Silly me.

[area51]

23. So, Clarence Thomas wants to legislate from the bench.

I thought rightwingers frowned upon an activist court.

[DallasNE]

26. But That Is Legislating From The Bench

And is light years away from strict construction.

If it is something that needs to be regulated, and I'm not saying either way, then it is up to Congress to pass legislation and then for the Supreme Court to weigh in. What Thomas proposes is preposterous.

[Red Mountain]

29. Go easy on the guy!

I look forward to seeing what the founding fathers had to say about the internet.

[SWBTATTReg]

33. thomas is full of it if you want my opinion. What about the rights of the other hundreds of ...

millions of us on these platforms and some loudmouth yells the equivalent of 'FIRE' in a digital platform? What about our first Amendment rights, Justice Thomas? Or, are you full of BS as usual, siding for your buddies in 'woke' America (with the likes of Josh Hawley) who gripe and moan about the power of these large successful companies in the digital arena, who actually by the force of their presence, bestow the power of the masses over those very few (like the josh hawleys who think their mouths desire more airtime than the rest of us do?). That is, the republican party wants to stifle the rest of us via going after these large digital platforms?

[LudwigPastorius]

34. Yeah, I don't think the Constitution is down with the government nationalizing media outlets.

Last edited Tue Apr 6, 2021, 02:23 AM - Edit history (2)

...which is what Clarence "Slappy" Thomas is proposing here.

Hey Justice Thom, since you want Twitter, Facebook, et al. to be forced to host whatever speech without moderation, I guess you'd be fine with them hosting a continuous stream of posts asserting that you are a traitorous, shit-eating pedophile that likes to have your traitorous wife tie you up and spank you with a barbed wire paddle.

Yes, Facebook and Twitter are gigantic corporations with too much power. Instead of proposing the government try and strip away the First Amendment rights of the owners of these companies, maybe you should write your Congressman and Senators and propose that they come up with some anti-trust laws?

[ColinC]

35. I think we will soon have no choice but to reign in Thomas' ability to do these things.

Something about a commission to study SCOTUS, and potentially add more judges.

[dchill]

36. Save us from these activist Justices!