Thread by @AriCohn

John Catanzara is an unmitigated asshole shitbird.

But I really should not have to tell you, @mawarnerjr, that encouraging police officers to violate the city's vaccine mandate is absolutely not "sedition."

Shameful that those words escaped your mouth.

nbcchicago.com/news/local/jud…

Not for nothing, the question of whether it is proscribable incitement may be a closer call, given that Illinois law prohibits strikes/work stoppages by police officers.

But sedition it is definitely not.

"Advocating anarchy" is also protected by the First Amendment, by the way.

To be clear, when I say it's a closer question on incitement, I mean that a judge might reasonably want to take a look at whether the speech was actually encouraging an unlawful work stoppage.

About that:

1) There's a good argument that it wasn't directly encouraging that

2) Even if it was, I'm not sure a violation of labor law, the only statutory sanction for which is workplace discipline, should suffice for "lawless action."

3) I don't think the "imminent" requirement is met.

Yes, there was a reporting deadline that he was encouraging officers to ignore. But part of the rationale is that we don't want to unprotect speech unless there's an immediate inflammation of passions, so to speak, that people don't have the opportunity to consider their actions.

Here there was plenty of time for officers to make that decision. The responsibility for that choice should be on them.

Without the benefit of having read the TRO, which I haven't been able to find, I'm pretty skeptical of it.