Thread by @AriCohn

The introduction to these Zoom CLE panelists that includes a judge talking about "whether the First Amendment should protect hate speech" has me expecting the worst and looking for the liquor.

Lord help me this slide is from an appellate court judge.

And he just said that "you can either protect people or protect speech. It is one or the other."

My God, this was even worse than I could have anticipated.

I am all for respecting the bench, but it offends every fiber of my professional being for an appellate court judge to present at a CLE and make flagrant misrepresentations of the law.

This is how disinformation spreads, and it is unacceptable.

Also he said that completely wrong list of unprotected speech was just a list of SOME of the things that are unprotected, and that there are a lot more?

Perhaps predictably, the moderator is declining to ask the question I submitted about the difficulties and dangers in defining "hate speech" and enforcing laws against it.

Meanwhile, she sees fit to ask the genius submitted question "who is funding websites like Telegram?"

🤷‍♂️

And the judge just said:

1) With the right Supreme Court, the First Amendment can change. And it should.

2) We should consider community standards when evaluating whether something is hate speech, like we do with pornography.

I'm about to jump through my computer screen.

He literally just offered the closing thought:

Think about this--is all speech equal? The marketplace of ideas is an old idea, and I don't think it is for the 21st century.

This has been a harrowing experience.