XPost: alt.fan.rush-limbaugh, law.court.federal, sac.politics   
   XPost: talk.politics.guns   
   From: unqualified.black.cunt@splcenter.org   
      
   The Supreme Court on Monday declined to hear an appeal from Black Lives   
   Matters organizer DeRay Mckesson, letting stand a lower court’s decision   
   that some critics fear could wind up limiting the First Amendment rights   
   of Americans to organize protests against the government and police.   
      
   The upshot is that Mckesson’s case will return to a lower court for   
   further review.   
      
   There were no noted dissents but Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote separately   
   and said that lower courts would be able to take into account a separate   
   First Amendment decision from the court last term that could work in   
   Mckesson’s favor.   
      
   The Baton Rouge protest at issue in the case followed the 2016 killing of   
   Alton Sterling, a Black resident shot and killed by police. Since then,   
   protests erupted in cities across the nation – some of which turned   
   violent – in response to the killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police   
   in 2020.   
      
   Lawyers for an officer injured in the Baton Rouge incident argued that   
   Mckesson planned an unlawful protest and that the violence was   
   foreseeable. The First Amendment, the lawyers argued, does not protect   
   against damage claims if an organizer’s actions are “negligent, illegal   
   and dangerous.” The officer lost teeth when the object was thrown, his   
   lawyers said, and suffered injuries to his “brain and head.”   
      
   Mckesson relied heavily on a major Supreme Court decision from 1982 that   
   is tied to the Civil Rights Movement. In that case, a unanimous court   
   limited liability for protest organizers in similar situations. The   
   decision reversed a Mississippi Supreme Court ruling that Charles Evers, a   
   well-known civil rights activist, could be held liable for damages during   
   a 1966 boycott of White merchants.   
      
   The unnamed officer in the current case countered that precedent shouldn’t   
   stop the appeal because the violence that took place in Louisiana was   
   “reasonably foreseeable” and was a consequence of Mckesson’s “own   
   negligent, and illegal activity.”   
      
   The Supreme Court had considered the case before. In an unsigned opinion   
   in 2020, the justices sent the matter back to appeals courts to review the   
   Louisiana law, declining to reach the First Amendment questions. The legal   
   questions were reconsidered and Mckesson still lost.   
      
   Last year, the US Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit sided again with   
   the officer, who is using a pseudonym, John Doe.   
      
   “This case would be different if all Mckesson had done was organize a   
   lawful protest, and if an unidentified protester had nonetheless assaulted   
   Doe,” the majority 5th Circuit opinion read. “But that is not what Doe   
   alleges happened. Rather, Doe alleges that Mckesson organized and led the   
   protest in such a manner that his actions ‘were likely to incite lawless   
   action.’”   
      
   Writing in partial dissent, US Circuit Judge Don Willett said that the   
   majority’s position would “reduce First Amendment protections for protest   
   leaders to a phantasm, almost incapable of real-world effect.”   
      
   https://www.cnn.com/2024/04/15/politics/deray-mckesson-first-amendment-   
   supreme-court/index.html   
      
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