Opinion: Even conservative justices have a right to privacy - Marcus
“The home is different,” Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor wrote in 1988, upholding the constitutionality of a Wisconsin suburb’s ordinance prohibiting “targeted picketing” outside residents’ homes. “A special benefit of the privacy all citizens enjoy within their own walls, which the State may legislate to protect, is an ability to avoid intrusions.”
More than three decades later, with another question of residential picketing in front of the court but on a more personal basis, there is a certain irony to the factual setting of O’Connor’s opinion. Then, the justices were grappling with the question of protesters gathering outside the home of a doctor who performed abortions — carrying signs, shouting slogans and warning children to stay away from the “baby killer.”
Now, the tables have turned. The picketers are protesting the court’s decision to eliminate constitutional protection for abortion. And their intended targets are the homes of the justices themselves, on the leafy streets of Chevy Chase, Md., and in the suburbs of Virginia. Earlier this month, Supreme Court Marshal Gail A. Curley wrote to the states’ governors and local executives asking that they enforce existing prohibitions against residential picketing.
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But Elrich, (Montgomery County Executive) responding in public comments Wednesday, declined Curley’s request. He dismissed it as a publicity stunt: “It’s not about security when you get a message from the press office about security,” he said of the letter, which was released to the public. And he invoked the example of authoritarian regimes: “I think all you got to do is look at Putin’s Russia, and get an idea of where you don’t want to go,” Elrich said. “This idea where people can gather together and if you gather together, you’re gonna be arrested. That’s not happening here.”
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But count me with Curley — and O’Connor — over Elrich. The pickets at justices’ homes — they’ve primarily targeted Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh — are beyond the pale. As I’ve written before, they’re unnecessary; protesters can make their views amply known at the court itself. They are, if anything, counterproductive. Maybe making justices’ lives miserable will make people feel better, but it won’t accomplish anything beyond that. Justices, and their families, deserve as much protection from bombardment within their own homes as abortion doctors do... and for the sake of the justices, their beleaguered families and at least some of their exasperated neighbors — Elrich should enforce the law as written. That will still leave the streets of Chevy Chase a far cry from Vladimir Putin’s Russia.
There’s also a federal law that prohibits picketing outside the homes of judges and others involved in the court system “with the intent of influencing any judge, juror, witness, or court officer, in the discharge of his duty.” But in the case of pickets motivated by the abortion ruling, as UCLA law professor Eugene Volokh has noted, “Such an intent may be hard to prove, especially after the decision has been handed down, and the Justices have already discharged their duties.”
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https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/08/kavanaugh-protests-abortion-elrich
= new reply since forum marked as read
The nation as a whole made their views known. It changed nothing. So, time to make them see just how pissed we are. Being nice is not going to do anything but allow these privileged asshats to ignore the peons who do not make their lives easier. (They may not be getting grift, but that does not mean their family doesn't. And, just because it is not obvious, that does not mean it is not happening.)
