Eric Goldman s Techdirt Profile techdirt.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from techdirt.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Wed, Apr 14th 2021 10:48am
Eric Goldman
Last week, we had a post about Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas very weird statement in a concurrence on mooting an unrelated case, in which he seemed to attack free speech and Section 230. Law professor Eric Goldman has written up an incredibly thorough response to Thomas statement that we thought the Techdirt community might appreciate, and so we re reposting in here.
Last week, the Supreme Court vacated the Second Circuit’s Knight v. Trump ruling. The Second Circuit held that Trump violated the First Amendment when he blocked other Twitter users from engaging with his @realdonaldtrump account. Other courts are holding that government officials can’t block social media users from their official accounts, but they can freely block from personal or campaign accounts. Vacating the Second Circuit opinion probably won’t materially change that caselaw.
Mon, Apr 5th 2021 10:38am
Mike Masnick
Today was a weird one for Justice Thomas. Along with his bizarre and confusing dissent in the Oracle/Google case, he has done another one of his random walks down conspiracy theory nonsense lane on an unbriefed issue in which he gets to, once again, attack the 1st Amendment. He s done this a few times now. Two years ago he did this in writing an unprovoked attack on the 1st Amendment regarding NY Times v. Sullivan. Last year, he did it with an unprovoked and bizarre attack on Section 230. And now he s done it again.