A Victory For Free Speech

The left has been trying to embed the "hate speech is not free speech" meme into the national consciousness for at least the last couple of years. Well, yesterday, SCOTUS handed down a decision that addressed this very issue.

The case centered on Oregon-based, Asian-American band The Slants, which was denied a trademark because its name was considered offensive. The band countered that the 70-year-old law at issue violates free-speech rights -- and Justice Samuel Alito, in the court’s opinion, agreed.

And here is the result:

And the good part? It was an 8-0(!) decision. Even the Court's far left contingent agreed.

So progressives can just suck it.

Here's the only sour note:

Alito cautioned in his opinion that the government still “has an interest in preventing speech expressing ideas that offend.”

I haven't read the opinion, so I don't know the context of this statement, but it reminds me of my one and only beef with conservative jurisprudence, i.e. sometimes it conserves too much. That is, it sounds like the ruling was based on extremely narrow grounds that will provide progressives many opportunities for relitigation. Like Obergefell. If by some miracle it had gone 5-4 our way, the progressives would have been back within a year with another homosexual marriage case from another state, and they wouldn't have given up until they got the decision they wanted. Then BAM!, now it's settled law and any subsequent challenge is a violation of "precedent."

The end result always seems to be that progressive victories become permanent, but conservative ones rarely do so.

Second look at conservative judicial activism?

posted by OregonMuse at 11:31 AM

| Access Comments