So if they did it to me, it's bad, but to Facebook it's OK? In some court cases the actual harm matters, and sometimes it's the principle that matters.
Laura at the DMV could tell me to disallow ISIS from buying stuff from my company and there's no way I could consider that an actionable threat of any kind.
if the random government bureaucrat "demanded" something of you you didn't want to do, and you laughed him or her out of the room, both actions are okay
it seems Facebook was more polite than that, instead just ignoring the random government bureaucrat when it suited them
also, in American courts, it is the actual harm that matters. No harm, no standing, no court case.
> also, in American courts, it is the actual harm that matters. No harm, no standing, no court case.
Traditionally, yes, although that didn't stop SCOTUS from ruling last week in a case in which the plaintiff experienced no harm (not to mention admitted to perjury).
> When Smith's suit was filed at the federal district court in 2016, she had not begun designing websites, nor had she received any requests to design a wedding website for a same-sex couple. In 2017, her lawyers ADF filed an affidavit from Smith stating that she had received such a request several days after the initial filing, and appended a copy of the request. Smith never responded to the request, and has stated that she feared she would violate Colorado's law if she were to do so. However, the name, email, and phone number on the online form belong to a man who has long been married to a woman, and who stated that he never submitted such a request, as reported by The New Republic on June 29, 2023, a day before the Supreme Court's decision was released.
> That narrative was thrown into question last week after The New Republic published an article on Stewart, who denied ever having reached out to Smith. It quoted him saying he was a web designer who has been married to a woman for years.
> “I wouldn’t want anybody to … make me a wedding website?” the man identified only as Stewart told the magazine. “I’m married, I have a child — I’m not really sure where that came from? But somebody’s using false information in a Supreme Court filing document.”
Perjury is probably a stretch, and it's unlikely to affect the ruling any.
> Perjury is probably a stretch, and it's unlikely to affect the ruling any.
Perjury is not a stretch. The case was revised before it reached SCOTUS, but her original court filing claimed that she had received a request from a specific named individual to design a website for his gay wedding.
Not only has that individual - who is a heterosexual man already married to a woman - denied ever making a request, but the plaintiff herself later claimed in court documents, under penalty of perjury, that she had not yet received a request to design a wedding website from a gay couple.
The case as presented to SCOTUS did not contain any perjurous claims, but the original case undeniably did.
I can't find evidence of that. From the NBC article, which calls the original request one asking for "pre-enforcement review":
> Smith sued in 2016 saying she wanted to design wedding websites but was concerned that the Colorado Anti-Discrimination Act would force her to put together websites for same-sex weddings, as well. She said she wanted to post a statement on her website making clear her opposition to doing so.
The claim about the email is in a later filing as an update. Its existence doesn't seem to be in question; its provenance does, but that could happen without the plaintiff's involvement. You'd have to prove they knew it was bullshit.
> A Colorado web designer who the U.S. Supreme Court ruled Friday could refuse to make wedding websites for gay couples cited a request from a man who says he never asked to work with her.
A pre-emptive request backed up by a fake customer does not equal standing (in a sane court but SCOTUS left sanity behind a couple of justice appointments ago.)
Someone said, "I want to do this," and the government credibly responded, "Do that and we'll take action against you." This equals standing for pre-enforcement actions, because the government is threatening to do something. If the government had responded, "Go ahead, we don't care", then that someone would not have standing. You don't always have to wait for the government to actually take action against you to have standing, so long as you can prove the government would take action against you if you did the thing.
There are "criminal attempt" and "conspiracy" charges, so in general it's possible, but probably not in this case.
If I'm reading this right, the plaintiffs felt harmed because their information they might have received was effectively censored. Not all of the sources were, but enough of them were removed that would have been published without the government's intervention.
This is one of those times where I look at what someone says, and think, "Aren't you the same people who thought X about Y, and now, you think something that seems totally contradictory because Y' happens to support the opposite side?" Then, I realize all sides are comprised of heterogenous people with ideas that happen to have similar throughlines, and I'm comparing your statement to something I read from someone I perceived as being from the same side.
To this specific topic, could you clarify your position? Do you think the same is applicable to a police officer or an IRS agent?
The specific thing that made me think your statement was contradictory was police. The left was demanding police to be accountable seemingly five minutes ago. For most police departments, I think they went too far in saying the whole system was corrupt. I think there's at least an argument to be made about the extent of the Biden administration's involvement, but certainly you think the person doing the coercion should be punished, right?
It seems to me that any case of a "random bureaucrat" attempting to coerce a citizen or company outside of their civil mandate should be punished to the maximum extent of the law. If there isn't a criminal punishment already for this, one should be created and applied retroactively because it should be common sense.
if an IRS employee told you that you needed to delete a social media post, you'd obviously realize they have no authority to do so, just like a BLS employee for example, and you could tell either to go stuff themselves in as polite a fashion as you prefer
in the case of a police officer, our current society is one in which
police officers can and often do immediately assault and/or shoot and/or kill you for doing or being something they don't like, regardless of whether you're right or wrong, and they can do so with little question and no internal criticism or retribution or punishment, which is an entirely different issue in and of itself
the same is obviously not true of Steve who works at the IRS. Steve would be tried for murder. So would Flaherty.
