I’ll take The Constitution for $1,000, Alex…
Roseanne's Supreme Court smackdown on Twitter's latest takedown.
This week, in the conservative Daily Caller, Netchoice general counsel, law professor, and friend Carl Szabo pens an open Op-Ed letter to conservatives arguing that the Constitution’s First Amendment protections for free expression stop at the digital borders of social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter. Taking a market-based approach, he argues that social media platforms are exercising their own free speech rights when they censor content and that users who find their views suppressed can simply choose to use a different platform. Going a bit further, he asserts that “businesses must be allowed to do as they see fit” and worries that conservatives are abandoning core principles for short-term political gain.
Conservatives proudly defend private property rights and this would seem pretty cut-and-dried, but trending over on Reddit, prominent conservative…
...Roseanne Barr, God love her, is highlighting new information that makes it seem that this issue isn't so simple. In 1946, the Supreme Court heard the case of Marsh v. Alabama, where a Jehovah's Witness was arrested on trespassing charges for distributing religious literature in Chickasaw, Alabama, a town wholly-owned by Gulf Shipbuilding Corporation. From Roseanne's screenshot summation: in its' 5-3 decision, Justice Hugo Black, writing for the majority, decreed that:
"private entities do not have the right to ban speech on their property if they happen to own a monopoly on the means by which speech can take place. Black also argued that the more that private entities open their property up to public use, the fewer rights they have to control or ban what people do on that property."
Conservatives, property rights, and Roseanne citing Supreme Court precedent…This is getting good.