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Cheerleader’s Snapchat rant leads to ‘momentous’ Supreme Court case on speech

washingtonpost.com

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Re: Cheerleader’s Snapchat rant leads to ‘momentous’ Supreme Court case on speech

#431

Post by rdonovan »

thyrsus wrote: post #416
ipaddr wrote: post #387

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is crazy the lack of protections around firing people. People fear that it would be harder for businesses to fire someone so they would be less eager to hire. But then you connect any health services to being employed and you created a big hole in the overall plan.

This is why I don't understand why businesses aren't demanding universal health care and a universal basic income. Employees are much less expensive when one is not providing health care, and also less expensive when pay provides a marginal increase in quality of life instead of all of subsistence.

Businesses aren't demanding these things because they would take away their leverage over their employees. You need the employer for your income and your health insurance right now. Why would they want to make it easier for you to leave them?

Re: Cheerleader’s Snapchat rant leads to ‘momentous’ Supreme Court case on speech

#432

Post by goatcode »

mandelbrotwurst wrote: post #242
goatcode wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Being "canceled" is a choice that private individuals and institutions You're making a lot of assumptions about the comment above yours. Language changes.

Your argument would be stronger if you proposed an alternate definition rather than just saying “you’re wrong, that’s not what it means anymore!”

What I'm getting at is this: The story is about notable consequences at a school, which is not a private institution (generally). So, the commenter was probably using the term in conjunction with such consequences. It was clear from the comment, and the response seemed to be nit-picking a pseudo dictionary definition, so I tried to point out the colloquial usage.

Re: Cheerleader’s Snapchat rant leads to ‘momentous’ Supreme Court case on speech

#433

Post by swebs »

busymom0 wrote: post #333
standardUser wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There are people being suspended from actual school for non-threatening photos with guns or even just liking a photo of a gun. You may get downvoted for making a preposterous claim with no supporting evidence.

There have been several examples. Here's one from recently: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/family-of-boy-suspen... > Nine-year-old Ka Mauri Harrison was taking a test virtually when he saw his teacher rush to get his attention after she spotted the BB gun in his room, a New Orleans NBC affiliate WDSU reported. > Ka Mauri's parents chose to start the school year off remotely, due to the coronavirus pandemic.…

Thanks for the links. They're really eye-opening.

Re: Cheerleader’s Snapchat rant leads to ‘momentous’ Supreme Court case on speech

#434

Post by giantg2 »

dragonwriter wrote: post #419
giantg2 wrote: post #418

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"BL did not waive any constitutional rights when she signed the cheer contract." This is very interesting. I guess they mean any off campus rights. Many rights are clearly restricted on campus, including school events at any location. I also see the bring up that the prohibited conduct in the contract is not strictly defined. Yet we have plenty of laws which are also not strictly defined and they are upheld (so much…

> This is very interesting. I guess they mean any off campus rights No, they mean any Constitutional rights. > Many rights are clearly restricted on campus, including school events at any location. To the extent that that is true, that’s not a waiver by the student. But while it allows considerable regulation, the limitation on free speech on schools is quite narrow. > Yet we have plenty of laws which are also not st…

"No, they mean any Constitutional rights"

So knives and guns aren't banned? Drug searches without consent are ok?

"To the extent that that is true, that’s not a waiver by the student. But while it allows considerable regulation, the limitation on free speech on schools is quite narrow."

It seems quite broad based on the case laws they cite. It can restrict vulgarity, imaginary stories containing violence, prayer, and basically any topic they feel would cause a disturbance, which is a lot.

"Lenity is not absence of strict definition of what is prohibited, but government’s power to not fully prosecutr what is prohibited. Strict definition is about the boundary of what may be enforced."

If a law is defined using vague terms, then any ambiguity is supposed to benefit the defendant. The reasoning is that you can't expect people to abide by a law that is unknowable because it lacks a clear definition.

"then the solution is for the government not to run cheerleading teams, not for thr government to assume unconstitutional powers."

"That is not the basis for the (fairly narrow, in the case of free speech) power of government to regulate conduct in schools beyond what it can do in other contexts."

Exactly my point about education in the previous comment. These exceptions to rights that are necessary for the school to function, by your own argument, make it so that the government should not be running schools at all.

You reference these narrow restrictions from previous rulings. On what basis where they created? Not on some Constitutional text, but on the court deciding those rights can be restricted. So too could they rule in this case and cement a restriction that was not challenged before.

"That is not the basis for the (fairly narrow, in the case of free speech) power of government to regulate conduct in schools beyond what it can do in other contexts."

Then what is? I see nothing in the Constitution allowing for those restrictions on this right. They were manufactured by the court through common law customs/beliefs and cemented in case law.

Re: Cheerleader’s Snapchat rant leads to ‘momentous’ Supreme Court case on speech

#435

Post by klmadfejno »

listless wrote: post #57
klmadfejno wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think its perfectly fine to shun people if you think they're awful. Continuing association with someone who is, for example, is supportive of ethnic cleansing, is expressing that you condone those things. Choosing not to decide is still a choice. The question at hand is whether you believe isolated private communications to be representative of true nature.

I don’t think that’s true. If you visit a convicted rapist in prison when nobody else will do you condone rape? Or are you performing an act of kindness? I think the ironic and not obvious answer here is that we stop committing people to the garbage heap of humanity via religious-like shunning. That reaction is what gives bad ideas power. People are complicated. You can’t boil them down to a true nature that is “good…

Now you're conflating a crime that was committed vs. an uncovered privately held belief. Visiting a repentant criminal doesn't condone their crime, obviously.

Visiting a rapist who speaks freely, or privately just to you, about how much he enjoys rape certainly begs the question of why you're doing what you're doing.

Employing such a person who says these things speaks volumes about your concern for the feelings of people who feel threatened or have suffered sexual assault in the past, especially on your team.

All of this boils down to how much legitimacy we're willing to offer people based on what we know about them. If you want to offer the worst of the worst people just enough legitimacy to have a human conversation once in a while, I think that's defensible. If you think one's reputation doesn't have massive reprecussions on which social groups you welcome them into I think you're naive.

Re: Cheerleader’s Snapchat rant leads to ‘momentous’ Supreme Court case on speech

#436

Post by sanderjd »

ipaddr wrote: post #387
sanderjd wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll admit to a little frustration with people who act like current law (usually the first amendment) protects people from "cancellation" by private actors. But I'm more open to arguments that we should create new employment law that makes it harder to arbitrarily fire people. I don't think this is a good idea, for the record, but it is a reasonable argument to make. Many other countries have much stronger worker pro…

It is crazy the lack of protections around firing people. People fear that it would be harder for businesses to fire someone so they would be less eager to hire. But then you connect any health services to being employed and you created a big hole in the overall plan.

Health care should not be linked to employment. This is the original sin underlying a significant number of problems in the country.

Re: Cheerleader’s Snapchat rant leads to ‘momentous’ Supreme Court case on speech

#437

Post by klmadfejno »

ramblerman wrote: post #72
klmadfejno wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think its perfectly fine to shun people if you think they're awful. Continuing association with someone who is, for example, is supportive of ethnic cleansing, is expressing that you condone those things. Choosing not to decide is still a choice. The question at hand is whether you believe isolated private communications to be representative of true nature.

You are conflating your individual right to hang out with who you please with that of an institution like a school or company. Nobody would disagree with the individual right.

Nobody should be banned, hands down, from working at a company, generically (that is. legally unemployable). But companies are run by people. And people make decisions about who is allowed to work in their company specifically. It's nonsense to suggest that managers of companies cannot factor reputation into their consideration of the pros and cons of having a person in their employment.

I would fire someone in a heartbeat if I heard they were a self identifying Neo Nazi or klansman, and they affirmed this when confronted. I don't want to work with nazis. I don't want my team to have to work with nazis. I don't want people to think I work at a company that knowingly employs nazis.

The converse is you need to offer a way for people to change. The point of social pressures like this is to get people to stop being the worst. We say "echo chamber" like its unilaterally bad, because in america 'muh freedom' means whatever the individual wants is what the individual is entitled to preach. But honestly there's a lot of basic social norms that are healthy to enforce, without embedding it in legal code.

Re: Cheerleader’s Snapchat rant leads to ‘momentous’ Supreme Court case on speech

#438

Post by egberts1 »

It is only a Supreme Court preview because the school is a (local) government entity and that the coach is a government employee.

This event CAN STILL be “cancelled” with the same scenario if it were a private school instead of a government school.

First Amendment applies only to government entities and its employees.

Caveat!

Re: Cheerleader’s Snapchat rant leads to ‘momentous’ Supreme Court case on speech

#439

Post by nonameiguess »

bostonsre wrote: post #371
eagsalazar2 wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a lot different than being "canceled". The school must abide by policies and incorporate student's right to free speech, access to education, and equitable access to related school services and programs (including cheerleading). Being "canceled" is a choice that private individuals and institutions make to not associate themselves with speech, actions, or views they find either objectionable or simply damagin…

> Conflating these things is a favorite straw man of people who simply feel scared and angry that they don't always get to be jerks with zero social or career implications (try going around saying you are a satanist and see how that affects your career, this isn't a new thing, just people are whining about it more loudly lately). They are very much not the same. I find it hard to believe that the anti cancelation arg…

I don't see how you can possibly say it's easier now than ever. Past incarnations of this type of thing like the KKK, lynch mobs, witch hunts, the Spanish Inquisition, often had legal authority and canceled you from Earth rather than just forcing you to use some platform other than Twitter or Facebook to publish your opinion. Nor are Hollywood blacklists a remotely new thing. The only new element is the blacklistable offenses have changed from support of communists and various left radicals to sexual harassment and racism.

Re: Cheerleader’s Snapchat rant leads to ‘momentous’ Supreme Court case on speech

#440

Post by nonameiguess »

mcny wrote: post #417
thyrsus wrote: post #416

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is why I don't understand why businesses aren't demanding universal health care and a universal basic income. Employees are much less expensive when one is not providing health care, and also less expensive when pay provides a marginal increase in quality of life instead of all of subsistence.

I think that’s the same reason why I subscribe to the conspiracy theory that the US military opposes both universal healthcare and free of cost college and university education. I think overall businesses don’t care enough about higher costs because at the end of the day they can just fire me without providing cause if I cost more than I am worth to the business. There was a thread about cloud services such as cloudi…

The US military has no official position on those things at all, and the actual people making it up run the gamut the same as any other cross section of the population. By far the greatest factor impacting recruiting is the overall state of the economy and how easy it is to get any other job, but surely you don't think that means the US military actively sabotages the US economy and job market to boost recruiting.
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