Tag: scotus

The Supreme Court Fight That Could Decide Who Gets to Stay Online

A lineup of civil liberties organizations, technology companies, and internet freedom advocates has filed briefs supporting Cox Communications in a closely watched Supreme Court case that could dramatically alter how internet service providers respond to copyright complaints.

The case, Cox Communications v. Sony Music Entertainment, asks whether ISPs must terminate internet service to users accused, but not convicted, of piracy.

The Supreme Court’s upcoming decision is one of the most consequential internet-related cases in years, not just for copyright law, but for the future of how people access the internet in the United States.

At stake is a fundamental question: can internet service providers be held liable and forced to cut off internet access to users simply because they’ve been accused of copyright infringement, without any judicial process or proof?

Those standing with Cox include the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Mozilla, Pinterest, and X.

Kiwi Farms founder and president of the U.S. Internet Preservation Society (USIPS), Joshua Moon, also filed a brief “in support of neither party,” but opposing internet cutoffs and arguing that contributory copyright infringement is a judge-made doctrine without a statutory basis, and it has become unworkable and unfair because courts have never clearly defined its “knowledge” standard.

This vagueness, combined with the rise of the DMCA’s notice-and-takedown regime, has chilled free speech and fair use, expanded copyright monopolies, and produced abusive practices.

Cox argues that the Fourth Circuit’s ruling, which held it liable for contributory infringement and ordered a new damages trial, created an untenable standard that would force ISPs to police user activity under threat of billion-dollar judgments.

In a joint brief, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, American Library Association, and others sharply criticized the Fourth Circuit’s interpretation.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation, American Library Association, and other groups filed a joint amicus brief urging the Court to reject the liability framework adopted by the Fourth Circuit.

They argue that the ruling could lead to widespread loss of internet access based on unproven accusations, with disproportionate consequences for ordinary people.

The brief stresses the importance of online access in modern life, stating: “Internet access is essential to participation in economic, cultural, and social activity.”

The groups caution that adopting a liability standard based on mere knowledge, rather than intent or inducement, would cause serious collateral harm. The brief warns that imposing such rules on ISPs would inevitably result in users being disconnected because someone else in their household or workplace was accused of infringement.

They further argue that the Fourth Circuit’s decision improperly expands secondary copyright liability without congressional authorization, threatening to undermine constitutional protections tied to access, communication, and expression.

Even the US Department of Justice weighed in, siding with Cox on key legal questions. The DOJ told the Court that the Fourth Circuit’s approach “cannot be reconciled with this Court’s precedent” and warned against punishing providers who may simply be indifferent but not complicit.

In its brief, the DOJ stressed: “The evidence demonstrated at most that Cox was indifferent to its subscribers’ infringement, not that Cox intended to participate in that infringement or wished to bring it about.”

On the issue of willful infringement, the DOJ added that “willfulness in the civil context generally requires knowledge or reckless disregard of the fact that one’s own conduct is unlawful,” not just knowledge of someone else’s actions.

A coalition of major tech companies, Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Mozilla, and Pinterest, also submitted a unified brief opposing the lower court’s interpretation of contributory liability. They argue that the DMCA already outlines specific safe harbor rules, and the Fourth Circuit’s ruling improperly weaponizes the absence of safe harbor protection.

“The Fourth Circuit’s ruling erroneously turns Congress’s DMCA safe harbors into a liability-creating mechanism,” the companies stated.

They argued that liability should only attach to those engaged in “conscious, culpable conduct substantially assisting the primary wrongdoer.”

The brief makes clear that a finding of willfulness demands more than simple awareness: “Willfulness turns on the defendant’s mental state regarding its own conduct.”

USIPS criticized the legal foundation of the lower court’s ruling as illegitimate and warned that fear of liability is driving ISPs toward censorship.

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Obama Judge Says to Hell with Supreme Court, Blocks Trump Admin From Canceling Protected Status For 1.1 Million Venezuelans and Haitians

A San Francisco-based federal judge on Friday blocked the Trump Administration from canceling Protected Status for 1.1 million Venezuelans and Haitians.

US District Judge Edward Chen, an Obama appointee, acknowledged the Supreme Court’s ruling but claimed the high court did not bar him from adjudicating the case on the merits.

Earlier this year Judge Chen temporarily paused Trump’s plans to end Biden’s TPS program.

The DOJ argued that the parole programs were discretionary and it is up to the government to decide when it can cut the program.

In May, the Supreme Court in an 8-1 decision lifted Judge Chen’s block on Trump’s order to revoke protected status for hundreds of thousands of migrants while the policy was challenged in court.

Judge Chen said the Supreme Court didn’t bar him from issuing an order.

The Associated Press reported:

A federal judge on Friday ruled against the Trump administration from ending temporary legal protections that have granted more than 1 million people from Haiti and Venezuela the right to live and work in the United States.

The ruling by U.S. District Judge Edward Chen of San Francisco for the plaintiffs means 600,000 Venezuelans whose temporary protections expired in April or whose protections were about to expire Sept. 10 have status to stay and work in the United States.

Chen said Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s actions in terminating and vacating three extensions granted by the previous administration exceeded her statutory authority and were arbitrary and capricious.

CBP data found that over 1 million illegal aliens have been allowed into the US through what the Biden Regime defined as “legal” means.” The Biden-Kamala admin used the CBP One App and the CHNV program to allow illegals entry into the US.

These numbers are not included in the millions of illegals that have entered the US under Joe Biden’s watch.

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Amy Coney Barrett Fires Shot Across the Bow at Activist Judges: ‘Not Kings’

Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett threw a shot across the bow at fellow activist judges, warning them that they are “not kings,” but simply referees who decide whether people have played by the rules that are already established.

In an article for The Free Press written by Barrett, the SCOTUS justice reflected on her jurisprudence, making it clear that her personal views have no place dictating what happens when she’s sitting in the highest court of the land, nor do any other justices.

The Free Press headline read, “Amy Coney Barrett Speaks: People think the Supreme Court is about promoting justice. It’s really about judging what the law requires.”

“On the restraint judges must exercise, Justice Amy Coney Barrett writes, ‘We judges don’t dispense justice solely as we see it; instead, we’re constrained by law adopted through the democratic process,'” one post on X read about the article.

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Justice Jackson Writes Opinions For Her Media Fanbase, Not Everyday Americans

In roughly three years, Associate Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson has established herself as one of the most recognized members of the Supreme Court — and not in a good way.

Despite being the most junior justice on the high court, Jackson has regularly gone out of her way to thumb her nose at her colleagues for upholding America’s constitutional framework. Whether it be through public comments or poorly written opinions, the Biden appointee has shown little respect for the longstanding traditions and collegiality that have defined SCOTUS for generations.

The latest example of this came on Thursday, when the Supreme Court temporarily stayed (in part) a lower court block on the National Institutes of Health’s bid to terminate DEI-related contracts. The court’s ruling was 5-4, with Jackson joining Chief Justice John Roberts and Associate Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan in siding against the Trump administration.

In addition to signing onto Roberts’ opinion, Jackson penned a 21-page screed — which is longer than all the other justices’ opinions combined — denouncing the majority’s decision to partially grant the Trump administration’s request to pause the lower court’s order. Employing the writing style of a left-wing activist, the Biden appointee claimed that her colleagues’ decision is the “newest iteration” of the high court’s “lawmaking on the emergency docket.”

“Stated simply: With potentially life-saving scientific advancements on the line, the Court turns a nearly century-old statute aimed at remedying unreasoned agency decisionmaking into a gauntlet rather than a refuge,” Jackson wrote.

While it’s not uncommon for justices to explain their disagreements and problems with the opposing side’s legal rationale in their opinions, Jackson’s dissent (and this isn’t the first time) takes on another level of snide that’s unbecoming of a junior justice. She went on to effectively accuse her colleagues in the majority of abandoning all semblance of proper jurisprudence and respect for the law in order to bend over backwards for the Trump administration.

“This is Calvinball jurisprudence with a twist,” Jackson wrote. “Calvinball has only one rule: There are no fixed rules. We seem to have two: that one, and this Administration always wins.”

It’s pretty telling that none of the other justices in the dissent signed onto Jackson’s tirade. While they may share ideological similarities, even Sotomayor and Kagan recognize the importance of respecting and getting along with their conservative-leaning colleagues — especially given that these are lifetime appointments.

But for Jackson, that seemingly matters very little.

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Supreme Court Allows Trump Admin To Revoke DEI-Related NIH Grants

The Supreme Court voted 5–4 on Aug. 21 to allow the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to cancel hundreds of millions of dollars in research grants linked to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives.

The new ruling clears the way for the funding reductions while litigation over the grants continues in the lower courts.

The justices filed five separate opinions explaining their votes.

Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett voted to allow the grants to be cut.

Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, Ketanji Brown Jackson, and Chief Justice John Roberts voted to deny the government’s request to rescind the funding.

The high court said it acted because the federal government faces the possibility that the grant monies, once paid out, may not be recovered.

Moreover, “the plaintiffs do not state that they will repay grant money if the Government ultimately prevails.”

The case is known as National Institutes of Health v. American Public Health Association.

The Department of Justice filed an emergency application with the nation’s highest court late last month, asking the justices to block a ruling by Boston-based U.S. District Judge William Young, who found the cancellation was unlawful and ordered the government to restore the funding.

NIH began taking steps in February to end the grants that conflict with President Donald Trump’s policy priorities.

The NIH is the world’s largest government funder of biomedical research.

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Supreme Court Allows Mississippi Age Verification Law to Take Effect, Advancing Online Digital ID Push

The Supreme Court’s choice to let Mississippi enforce its new age verification law is part of a growing shift toward digital ID requirements across the internet, raising urgent concerns about privacy and censorship.

By declining to block the law while legal challenges continue, the Court has effectively allowed states to begin tying online activity to users’ real-world identities, a move that could reshape how people access information and speak freely online.

We obtained a copy of the ruling for you here.

Mississippi’s HB 1126 requires social media platforms to verify a user’s age before allowing them to create an account. Those under 18 must obtain parental permission. Platforms are also required to restrict access to what the state broadly labels as “harmful” content. For companies to comply, identity checks will be necessary, meaning users may soon need to provide government IDs or other personal documents just to post or view content on public platforms.

The Supreme Court has already allowed a similar Texas law to be enforced.

Justice Brett Kavanaugh, writing separately from the Court’s unsigned order, stated that the law is “likely unconstitutional” and said NetChoice had “likely” shown that enforcement would violate the First Amendment. Still, the Court allowed the law to take effect, saying the trade group had not shown a strong enough risk of harm to justify emergency relief.

NetChoice, which includes companies such as Meta, Google, Amazon, Reddit, and Discord, argues that mandatory age checks for general-purpose platforms violate free speech protections. The group had previously won a ruling to block the law, but that decision was overturned in April by the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals.

Paul Taske, co-director of the NetChoice Litigation Center, said the ruling was a delay, not a defeat. “Although we’re disappointed with the Court’s decision, Justice Kavanaugh’s concurrence makes clear that NetChoice will ultimately succeed in defending the First Amendment — not just in this case but across all NetChoice’s ID-for-Speech lawsuits,” he said.

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The Government Seized 7 Horses From a Georgia ‘Urban Cowboy.’ A Court Says He Can Sue.

The Constitution pledges that the government cannot take your property without “just compensation.” So if that happens, and no statute passed by the legislature applies to your specific case, can you sue?

That this is even a question may sound, at a minimum, harebrained. After all, the Constitution is the supreme law of the land. But whether or not that promise—as found in the Fifth Amendment’s Takings Clause—is effectively an empty one when it is not paired with a relevant law is a matter of active legal debate.

A federal court attempted to answer it last week in a case that hinged on, of all things, a local “urban cowboy.”

Fulton County, Georgia, seized seven horses from Brandon “Brannu” Fulton in 2017 after he was charged with animal cruelty. (The identical last name here is an unfortunate coincidence for the sake of clarity, but we will persevere.) Those charges were later dropped. But the government still declined to return the animals to Fulton—long ago dubbed Atlanta’s Urban Cowboy after his affinity for riding into town on horseback—nor would it compensate him for their value. One of those horses, he said, is worth $35,000.

Fulton (the man, not the county) sued under Section 1983, the federal statute that allows plaintiffs to bring lawsuits against state and local governments for violating their constitutional rights. But his suit was ultimately doomed by the Monell doctrine, which shields municipalities from facing liability for such claims unless a plaintiff can pinpoint an official government policy or custom that caused the alleged violation.

Fulton (the county, not the man) didn’t have an applicable policy. And for procedural reasons, the Urban Cowboy’s claims were barred under state law, as well. So he sought to rein back and redirect his complaint to sue directly under the Takings Clause itself.

In what is somewhat of a seismic opinion, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit said he could. “Our Constitution explicitly promises exactly two remedies: ‘just compensation’ if the government takes our property, and the writ of habeas corpus if it tries to take our lives or liberty,” wrote Judge Robin S. Rosenbaum for the majority. “And the Constitution delivers directly on each. It doesn’t taunt us by naming these remedies but then holding them out of reach, depending on the whims of the legislature.”

Many had hoped the Supreme Court would answer this exact question just last year. In DeVillier v. Texas, the justices heard a case brought by people whose property was damaged after the state constructed highway barriers that diverted massive amounts of floodwater onto their private land. Texas did not contest that the Takings Clause necessitates just compensation for people whose private property is taken by the government. But it promptly had the case moved to federal court, where it argued it could not be sued for damages because Congress has not passed a relevant statute ordering Texas to abide by the Takings Clause.

The 5th Circuit agreed.

The Supreme Court did not. In a unanimous opinion, the justices ruled that the plaintiffs could sue Texas—in state court. Yet while the Court agreed the property owners could invoke a state law cause of action, it did not address the broader dispute over whether a legislative cause of action is required at all. “Our precedents do not cleanly answer the question whether a plaintiff has a cause of action arising directly under the Takings Clause,” wrote Justice Clarence Thomas. “But, this case does not require us to resolve that question.”

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Supreme Court Urged to Halt Mississippi’s Online Digital ID Law Over Free Speech and Privacy Concerns

NetChoice has filed an emergency application with the US Supreme Court to halt the enforcement of Mississippi’s online age verification digital ID law, House Bill 1126, after the Fifth Circuit stayed a preliminary injunction without explanation. The group is urging the Court to reinstate the district court’s ruling and protect First Amendment rights, which it argues are under immediate threat.

The Mississippi law compels every person, regardless of age, to verify their identity before creating accounts on social media platforms, and requires minors to obtain explicit parental consent.

NetChoice argues that this framework “unconstitutionally imposes content-based parental-consent, age-verification, and monitoring-and-censorship requirements for vague categories of speech on social media websites.”

The emergency filing warns of far-reaching consequences, asserting that “the Act will prevent access to that expression for some users entirely—including those unwilling or unable to verify their age and minors who cannot secure parental consent.”

We obtained a copy of the filing for you here.

Adults would also be subject to this regime, required to share private information in order to access constitutionally protected online spaces.

According to the brief, “the Act would require adults and minors to provide personally identifying information to access all manner of fully protected speech.”

NetChoice compares this level of state control to a dystopian system where “stationing government-mandated clerks at every bookstore and theater to check identification before citizens can access books, movies, or even join conversations” would be the norm.

The brief continues, “This Act thus presents far different issues from pornography laws… it ‘directly targets’ a staggering amount of fully protected speech.”

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Supreme Court to Take Up Ban on Gun Ownership for Marijuana Users

The Supreme Court will consider hearing a gun control case related to a federal ban on firearm possession by marijuana users.

The high court is reportedly expected to have a private discussion on whether it will take up the case of US v. Cooper on September 29. The law has been roundly criticized by gun rights advocates who argue that it is a violation of the Second Amendment.

The case centers on LaVance LeMarr Cooper, who was prosecuted for owning a firearm as a marijuana user, which made him a “prohibited person” under 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(3), a federal criminal statute that bars certain people from owning firearms or ammunition.

This subsection targets those who unlawfully use controlled substances.

A police officer pulled Cooper over in Iowa during a traffic stop. They found a loaded Glock 20 in his vehicle. He did not have any felony convictions, but did have a misdemeanor conviction in 1996 for driving with a suspended license and marijuana possession.

Cooper later admitted to smoking marijuana on a regular basis — about three to four times per week. Prosecutors charged him with violating the federal statute. He waived his right to a jury trial and consented to a bench trial. This means he did not dispute that he owned a firearm while being a marijuana user.

The district court found him guilty on both counts and sentences him to over three years in prison  for the offenses — even though he was not intoxicated at the time of the traffic stop.

The Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals in February vacated Cooper’s convicted and remanded the case. The panel rules that the lower court failed to properly apply the Supreme Court’s ruling in New York Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen in Cooper’s case.

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Three Years Too Late, Kagan Condemns Leftist Threats Against SCOTUS

It only took three years, but Associate Justice Elena Kagan finally found it within herself to condemn leftist threats against her Republican-appointed colleagues — and it’s not hard to guess why.

Speaking at a judicial conference in California on Thursday, the Obama appointee discussed the “threats to personal safety” and an “endangerment of judges.” She specifically referenced the (leftist-led) threats and demonstrations that came about following the leak of the high court’s 2022 Dobbs decision overturning Roe v. Wade.

“That’s something that my court dealt with … a few years ago when Dobbs came down. When some of my colleagues, like my colleagues on the majority side, were confronted with protests outside their houses, including houses with children in them,” Kagan said, while also mentioning the gunman arrested for attempting to assassinate Associate Justice Brett Kavanaugh.

“That is scary stuff,” she added.

It’s nice to see Kagan criticize the threats and attacks against her Republican-appointed colleagues. It would have been even nicer had she emphatically done so back when it mattered.

As not-so-subtly indicated by Kagan herself during Thursday’s conference, the real reason for her sudden outspokenness on the issue appears to be her anger with President Trump and conservatives’ verbal criticisms of left-wing activists and judges’ weaponization of the legal system to stymie the president’s policy agenda.

Speaking in general terms, Kagan acknowledged that judges are “fair game for all kinds of criticism, strong criticism, pointed criticism, but vilifying judges … is a step beyond and ought to be understood as such.” The Obama appointee subsequently encouraged judges not to allow such pressures — which she dutifully classified as “threats” — to affect their jurisprudence.

“In the face of these sorts of threats to an independent judiciary, judges just need to do what they are obligated to do, which is to do law in the best way they know how to do, make independent, reasoned judgments based on precedent, based on other law, to not be inhibited by any of these threats,” she said.

Kagan’s remarks echo comments issued by her fellow Democrat-appointed colleagues, Associate Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson.

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