We haven’t *completely* gone round the bend just yet
by digby
The Supreme Court at least acknowledged that making doctors compel their patients to look at ultrasounds is a violation of their free speech (which one would have thought was a big duh) No word on whether it’s a violation of women’s basic human rights to be forced to look at anything…
Dahlia Lithwick breaks it down:
This morning the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal from North Carolina, seeking to revive a controversial ultrasound requirement before a woman may obtain an abortion. The court’s refusal to hear the case thus leaves intact a decision from the lower federal appeals court, finding that the 2011 North Carolina law was “ideological in intent” and violated doctors’ free-speech rights.
The law, versions of which have been passed in 23 other states, required doctors and technicians to perform an ultrasound, display the image of the sonogram, and specifically describe the fetus to any pregnant woman seeking an abortion, even if the woman actively “averts her eyes” and “refuses to hear.” The American Civil Liberties Union, the Center for Reproductive Rights, Planned Parenthood Federation of America, and other groups challenged the law, which was enjoined by a lower federal court and then struck down by the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals last winter.
Federal appeals courts have upheld similar laws from Texas and South Dakota, creating a split in the courts that sometimes leads the high court to weigh in. But not this time. The one-sentence order, as is the custom, offered no reasoning. Justice Antonin Scalia voted to hear the appeal. The refusal to hear the appeal does not impact any other state laws beyond North Carolina’s, which remains invalid.
I wrote about this issue of gag rules compelled speech for doctors a while back. It’s not just abortion. It’s gun safety too. Remember, on the right, the 1st Amendment is subordinate to the 2nd, the UberAmendment ordained by God.
Update: And then there’s this:
Washingtonian reports that the county of Arlington, Virginia recently voted to increase “penalties for public intoxication and blue language from $100 to $250.” This new ordinance actually mirrors a statewide law, which subjects “any person [who] profanely curses or swears or is intoxicated in public” to a similar fine.
In 2014, Arlington police reportedly made 664 arrests for violations of the ban on profanity or public drunkenness, although it is unclear if any of these were made purely because someone cursed.
Arlington’s decision to increase its own penalties for cursing is somewhat strange, however, as such a ban is almost certainly unconstitutional. In Gooding v. Wilson, the Supreme Court struck down a Georgia law that prohibited “opprobrious words or abusive language, tending to cause a breach of the peace.” Though the Court explained that a narrower law prohibiting so-called “fighting words” may be permissible, this law swept too broadly. “Vulgar or offensive” speech, Justice William Brennan explained in his opinion for the Court, may still be protected by the First Amendment.
Who the fuck do these people think they are?
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