Completely insane ruling. Wild that Kagan went across the aisle for this.

the First Amendment requires proofs of mental state

So I guess it's basically impossible to convict anyone of anything involving speech? If I yell "fire" in a crowded theater, how can you prove I wasn't having a delusion that there was a fire? Maybe there was an explosion in the movie and I was so immersed I thought it was real!

Dude had previous convictions and spent years doing this harassing, it's not like this was an isolated mental break. Truly insane.

Among Counterman's communications to Whalen were messages that read: "Was that you in the white Jeep?" and "You're not being good for human relations. Die. Don't need you." Others used expletives.

Whalen said the messages eventually left her paralyzed with fear and anxiety, causing her to cancel shows and turn down career opportunities, and leading her to apply for a concealed handgun permit and sleep with a light on.

The Supreme Court marshal asks state officials to act on protests at justices' homes

https://www.npr.org/2022/07/03/1109614708/protests-at-homes-of-supreme-court-justices

In a series of letters sent over the weekend, the marshal of the U.S. Supreme Court called on officials in Maryland and Virginia to "enforce" state and local laws that, she wrote, "prohibit picketing outside of the homes of Supreme Court Justices."

"For weeks on end, large groups of protesters chanting slogans, using bullhorns, and banging drums have picketed Justices' homes in Virginia," Marshal Gail Curley wrote to Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin. "This is exactly the kind of conduct that Virginia law prohibits."

Curley sent similar letters to Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan, along with several Maryland and Virginia county officials.

Curley's requests come after weeks of protests and picketing outside the homes of the court's conservative justices in the Maryland and Virginia suburbs of Washington, D.C. The protests began in May after a draft leaked of the justices' eventual decision to overturn Roe v. Wade.

Justice Amy Coney Barrett, in a dissent to the ruling joined by fellow conservative Justice Clarence Thomas, wrote that the decision "unjustifiably grants true threats preferential treatment."

...What the fuck? Am I taking crazy pills? In what fucking world do Thomas and Barrett advocate for a sane and rational approach to anything?

This one is going to require some poking around at other resources and summaries from legal minds greater than mine. I am baffled by the explanation laid out in this article.

This may be the most direct Catch-22 situation I've seen outside fiction novels, but with shitty stalkers. The stalker can't be convicted unless he's intending to threaten. He can't be considered threatening if he doesn't admit to being threatening. So as long as he says he didn't mean to threaten, despite literally telling the victim to die, he can't be convicted.

Among Counterman's communications to Whalen were messages that read: "Was that you in the white Jeep?" and "You're not being good for human relations. Die. Don't need you." Others used expletives. . . .

. . . . Whalen has described the messages from Counterman, which came to her over a two-year span beginning in 2014, as life-threatening and life-altering. She never responded to Counterman during this time and blocked his Facebook account at least four times, prompting him to continue messaging her from other platforms or through new Facebook accounts he created. . . .

"In a world rife with misunderstandings and miscommunications, people would be chilled from speaking altogether if they could be jailed for failing to predict how their words would be received. The First Amendment provides essential breathing room for public debate by requiring the government to demonstrate that the defendant acted intentionally or recklessly," Hauss said.

Well, it's good that we have safeguards for those who sit on their phone wrong and thereby unintentionally create block-evading accounts on multiple platforms. Guy really went to jail and it was all two solid years of misunderstandings. /s

I'm hearing harassment officially can't be prosecuted, if we're turning a blind eye to that degree. A lot of people are going to be emboldened by this, like they already took the law seriously anyway.

Like, yeah, a friend of mine nearly or actually got run off the road several times because the perpetrator wanted to date his gf, but maybe the would-be murderer was just a really bad driver. It was a notoriously dangerous road for both of them to be on ¯\_ (ツ) _/¯

The saddest part of this is I'm more shocked the CO police did something about it. Over here, they refused even a restraining order until we could show them a physical crime, which...you know, would kinda be too late.

Kangaroo court, lmao.

If you read it, it becomes clear that the issue is that Colorado wrote a stalking law that is in conflict with the first amendment. Something that can easily be corrected going forward, if it hasn't been corrected already.

So he was convicted in Colorado, but the proof for that conviction was not good enough for a federal court.

IANAL, but can read, and I think many people here are totally missing what this ruling actually says and doesn't say. It says the standard that Colorado used in this man's trial was too loose and would theoretically allow for conviction of protected speech. They did not say the speech in this case was definitely protected. They did not say it wasn't threatening. It's quite possible that if Colorado now chooses to retry the case that a jury would still decide he was guilty under the stricter standard too, but they have to retry him with a trial and jury working under that stricter standard, so that the overly loose law can't be used to theoretically restrict protected speech under the first ammendment in the future. The supreme court just corrected the standard Colorado was using and kicked it back to them, they did not exonerate the guy unless Colorado chooses not to try him again. The headlines are all being written to be extra inflammatory and misleading.

Just to take it to an extreme and make it extra simple, let's say we pass a law that says, you are guilty of murder if you are anywhere vaguely near where someone was killed. A guy is caught on video clearly murdering someone. They take him to court and tell the jury in their official jury instructions, if this man was vaguely near where the murder occurred he is guilty. They of course find him guilty. Supreme court steps in and says, wait, sure he's probably guilty, but the standard you had the jury judging him by was ridiculous, that can't be the standard for a murder conviction, and would probably result on infringement of multiple constitutional rights if you keep using that standard. Do a new trial with a better standard.

Does this mean people are allowed to stalk supreme court "justices" now? It sounds like they are legalizing stalking.

Holy shit. Supreme Court just declared open season on women.

Why are you shifting this argument so far? I never claimed the guy had tourette's, and I never said this guy shouldn't be insitutionalized. This is a completely irrelevant example.