The First Amendment (And A Court) Punch Back -- Joyce Vance

[erronis]

https://joycevance.substack.com/p/the-first-amendment-and-a-court-punch

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Senior Judge William G. Young in Boston issued the scathing 161-page opinion in American Association of University Professors v. Rubio. The issue in the case was “whether non-citizens lawfully present here in [the] United States actually have the same free speech rights as the rest of us.” Judge Young held that they do and that the First Amendment does not draw any distinction between the rights possessed in this regard by citizens and non-citizens. He wrote that Trump administration officials chilled free speech and peaceful assembly rights of non-citizens.

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“Can you imagine a masked marine? It is a matter of honor — and honor still matters. To us, masks are associated with cowardly desperados and the despised Ku Klux Klan. In all our history we have never tolerated an armed masked secret police. Carrying on in this fashion, ICE brings indelible obloquy to this administration and everyone who works in it.”

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But he was not so charitable when it came to “the intent of the Secretaries [Rubio and Noem] was more invidious -- to target a few for speaking out and then use the full rigor of the Immigration and Nationality Act (in ways it had never been used before) to have them publicly deported with the goal of tamping down proPalestinian student protests and terrorizing similarly situated non-citizen (and other) pro-Palestinians into silence because their views were unwelcome.” Judge Young wrote that there was no evidence the secretaries acted initially at the direction of the White House, and he declined to leap to that conclusion. However, he writes:

“What is clear, however, is that the President may not have authorized this operation (or even known about it), but once it was in play the President wholeheartedly supported it, making many individual case specific comments (some quite cruel) that demonstrate he has been fully briefed. Such conduct, of course, violates his sacred oath to ‘faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and . . . to the best of [his] Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States,’ U.S. Const. art. II, § 1, cl. 8, by ignoring the Constitution’s command that the President ‘take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed,’ U.S. Const. art. II, § 3. The fact that the President is, for all practical purposes, totally immune from any consequences for this conduct, Trump v. United States, 603 U.S. 593 (2024), does not relieve this Court of its duty to find the facts.”

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I have an image of the dottering old fool being fed some meds before he goes in front of the public.