Justice, SCOTUS, Supreme Court

Does Donald Trump Open The Way For Sex Offenders To Get Back On Twitter?

Is social media a core method of communication that sex offenders are entitled to?

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Sex OffenderNorth Carolina has a law that bars convicted sex offenders from using social media sites. It’s always difficult to convince people to care about the rights of sex offenders: I mean we live in a culture where hoping these people get raped in prison is a socially acceptable expression of “justice.” But the North Carolina restriction is up for Supreme Court review today, and it could be that the Pussy-Grabber-in-Chief has opened the door to letting these people reclaim some of their First Amendment protections.

The case is Packingham v. North Carolina. Lester Packingham is a registered sex offender who ran afoul of North Carolina’s law when he took to Facebook to “praise God” for the dismissal of his traffic tickets. It’s funny because if God cares about traffic tickets but not “indecent liberties with minors” (which is what Packingham pleaded guilty to), then we all live in hell.

Packingham’s lawyers argue that the law prohibits “vast swaths” of “core First Amendment activities.” North Carolina argues that social media is not a “crucial channel of communication.”

And that’s where the President comes in. This is from the Buzzfeed recap of today’s oral argument:

Justices expressed concern with the state’s law as limiting people’s access to what have become “crucially important” places for political communication — with Justice Elena Kagan noting, “The president now uses Twitter.”

Kagan asked repeated questions about the ways in which the law would limit people from sites like Twitter that “have become embedded in” the country’s political and religious culture.

Whatever argument you had about Twitter being a minimal restriction on a person’s rights are blown apart when the President of United States uses it as his main form of communication. I mean, can you imagine telling a convict in 1940 that he couldn’t turn on the radio?

And quite frankly, if the President can be accused of sexual misconduct by 13 women and still use Twitter (sometimes I think there are, like, only a thousand of us who REMEMBER THAT), then I don’t see why a convicted felon who has actually paid his debt to society should be barred from the service.

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I don’t think we want to live in a world where committing crimes gets you banned by the state from social media. It’s not like we prohibit arsonists from going into Home Depot.

Argument analysis: Justices skeptical about social media restrictions for sex offenders [SCOTUSblog]
Justices Appear Ready To Strike Law Barring Those On Sex Offender Registry From Social Media [Buzzfeed News]

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