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      Supreme Court to Decide How the First Amendment Applies to Social Media

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      Challenges to laws in Florida and Texas meant to protect conservative viewpoints are likely to yield a major constitutional ruling on tech platforms’ free speech rights.The most important First Amendment cases of the internet era, to be heard by the Supreme Court on Monday, may turn on a single question: Do platforms like Facebook, YouTube, TikTok and X most closely resemble newspapers or shopping centers or phone companies?The two cases arrive at the court garbed in politics, as they concern laws in Florida and Texas aimed at protecting conservative speech by forbidding leading social media sites from removing posts based on the views they express.But the outsize question the cases present transcends ideology. It is whether tech platforms have free speech rights to make editorial judgments. Picking the apt analogy from the court’s precedents could decide the matter, but none of the available ones is a perfect fit.If the platforms are like newspapers, they may publish what they want without government interference. If they are like private shopping centers open to the public, they may be required to let visitors say what they like. And if they are like phone companies, they must transmit everyone’s speech.“It is not at all obvious how our existing precedents, which predate the age of the internet, should apply to large social media companies,” Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. wrote in a 2022 dissent when one of the cases briefly reached the Supreme Court.Supporters of the state laws say they foster free speech, giving the public access to all points of view. Opponents say the laws trample on the platforms’ own First Amendment rights and would turn them into cesspools of filth, hate and lies. One contrarian brief, from liberal professors, urged the justices to uphold the key provision of the Texas law despite the harm they said it would cause.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Justice Thomas Hires Law Clerk Accused of Sending Racist Text Messages

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      Crystal Clanton, who is close with the Thomas family, has said she does not remember sending the messages, which emerged in 2017.Justice Clarence Thomas recently hired a law clerk who was previously accused of sending racist text messages, resurfacing the controversy around her.Crystal Clanton will begin clerking for the justice in the upcoming term, according to the Antonin Scalia Law School, from which she graduated in 2022.In late 2017, a New Yorker story reported that Ms. Clanton, who had served for five years as the national field director at Turning Point USA, a conservative student group, had sent the text messages, including the statement “i hate black people,” to another employee. The New York Times has not seen the messages.Ms. Clanton, who had resigned from the group by the time the article came out, told The New Yorker at the time that she had no recollection of the messages and that “they do not reflect what I believe or who I am and the same was true when I was a teenager.” (Ms. Clanton would have been 20 years old when the messages were sent.) She did not respond to requests for comment on Saturday.In the years since, Ms. Clanton has maintained a close relationship with Justice Thomas and his wife, Virginia Thomas. Ms. Thomas once served on the advisory board of Turning Point USA, and subsequently hired Ms. Clanton. The justice has called the allegations against Ms. Clanton unfounded and said that he does not believe her to be racist.Justice Thomas did not respond to a request for comment.The Thomases have welcomed Ms. Clanton into their inner circle. Photos from the Thomases’ 2022 holiday newsletter show that she joined the couple for Thanksgiving dinner. The Thomases also celebrated her graduation from Scalia Law.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Trump Faces Supreme Court Deadline on Claim of Absolute Immunity

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      A federal appeals court gave the former president until Monday to ask the justices to pause its ruling while he pursues an appeal.Former President Donald J. Trump is expected to file a last-ditch effort on Monday in the Supreme Court to press his claim of total immunity from criminal prosecution.When a federal appeals court last week rejected the claim, it temporarily paused its ruling, saying it would return the case to the trial court on Monday, allowing Judge Tanya S. Chutkan to restart proceedings in the case that had been frozen during the appeal. But the appeals court added that it would extend the pause until the Supreme Court rules — if Mr. Trump asks the justices to intervene by filing an application for a stay with them by Monday.That makes it virtually certain that Mr. Trump will file such an application in the coming hours, meaning that the Supreme Court will soon be poised to determine whether and how fast his federal trial on charges that he tried to subvert the 2020 election will proceed.It has several options. It could deny a stay, which would restart the trial. It could grant a brief stay and then deny a petition seeking review, which would effectively reject Mr. Trump’s immunity argument and let the appeals court’s ruling stand.It could hear his appeal on a fast track, as it is doing in a separate case on Mr. Trump’s eligibility to hold office. Or it could hear the case on the usual schedule, which would most likely delay any trial past the election.Timing, in other words, is everything. Unless the justices move quickly, the trial could be pushed into the heart of the 2024 campaign, or even past the election.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      No More Legal Games for Donald Trump

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      The most important words to issue from the federal appeals court in Washington on Tuesday were not in its unanimous 57-page opinion rejecting Donald Trump’s claim of absolute immunity from prosecution.That ruling, which denied the former president’s attempt to be absolved for his role in the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, was never in doubt. His claim is that presidents don’t enjoy immunity in just some cases, but that they are effectively above the law in all cases. During oral arguments last month, his lawyer even contended that a sitting president could order the assassination of a political rival and face no legal consequences.Rejecting this claim was easy. This line of reasoning “would collapse our system of separated powers by placing the president beyond the reach of all three branches,” wrote the three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. “We cannot accept that the office of the presidency places its former occupants above the law for all time thereafter.”The key sentence appeared elsewhere, in the one-page formal judgment accompanying the court’s opinion. “The clerk is directed to withhold issuance of the mandate through Feb. 12, 2024,” the judges wrote. With those words, the court put a hard deadline on Mr. Trump’s delay games. He has until the end of this coming Monday to appeal his loss to the Supreme Court. If he doesn’t, the mandate will issue, meaning that the trial court will regain jurisdiction of the case, and the trial can move forward.It was a welcome acknowledgment and rebuke of Mr. Trump’s strategy in the Jan. 6 case, which is to delay any legal reckoning. He is trying to run out the clock in the hope that he can win re-election and then dissolve the prosecution.So far, it’s working. The trial stemming from Jan. 6 has already been on hold for two months while the immunity appeal has played out, forcing the trial judge, Tanya Chutkan, to cancel the original start date, March 4. As Election Day approaches, it may become increasingly difficult to hold a trial that can be completed before Americans vote in the general election.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Forceful Opinion Repudiates Trump’s Immunity Claim in Election Case

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      The unanimous ruling, by a panel of appeals court judges appointed by presidents of both parties, systematically took apart the immunity claim.Former President Donald J. Trump’s claim that he was immune from being prosecuted for any crimes he committed while trying to stay in office after losing the 2020 election was always a long shot. But in an opinion on Tuesday eviscerating his assertion, three federal appeals court judges portrayed his position as not only wrong on the law but also repellent.“We cannot accept former President Trump’s claim that a president has unbounded authority to commit crimes that would neutralize the most fundamental check on executive power — the recognition and implementation of election results,” they wrote, adding with an emphatic echo: “We cannot accept that the office of the presidency places its former occupants above the law for all time thereafter.”The 57-page opinion was issued on behalf of all three members of a panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. They included two Democratic appointees and, significantly, Judge Karen L. Henderson, a Republican appointee who had sided with Mr. Trump in several earlier legal disputes.The ruling systematically weighed and forcefully rejected each of Mr. Trump’s arguments for why the case against him should be dismissed on immunity grounds. The resounding skepticism raised the question of whether the Supreme Court — to which Mr. Trump is widely expected to appeal — will decide there is any need for it to take up the case.On the one hand, the ruling unanimously answered each question put forward by Mr. Trump’s defense team, affirming a similar ruling by the trial judge overseeing the criminal case, Tanya S. Chutkan of the Federal District Court for the District of Columbia. It was far from clear whether a majority of Supreme Court justices would find anything to disagree with in its conclusions.Still, Mr. Trump’s claim of total immunity introduces a momentous legal issue the Supreme Court has never considered — no former president has ever been charged with crimes before, so there is no direct precedent. Normally, the justices might see it as appropriate to weigh in, too, even if it were merely to affirm an appeals court’s handiwork.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Read the Supreme Court’s Decision Allowing an Alabama Execution to Proceed

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      4

      SMITH v. HAMM

      SOTOMAYOR, J., dissenting

      likelihood of success on the merits of his claim challenging Alabama’s undeterred implementation of its heavily redacted, 5-month-old protocol. The equities here, as in nearly all capital cases where the prisoner has shown a reasonable probability of success on the merits, favor Smith. See Bucklew, 587 U. S., at (SOTOMAYOR, J., dissenting). While I would grant the petition for a writ of certiorari and summarily reverse the Eleventh Circuit’s order affirming the denial of Smith’s preliminary-injunction motion, at a minimum, I would grant Smith’s request for a stay of execution.

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      Having failed to kill Smith on its first attempt, Alabama has selected him as its “guinea pig” to test a method of execution never attempted before. Barber, 600 U. S., at The world is watching.2 This Court yet again permits Alabama to “experiment . . . with a human life,” while depriving Smith of “meaningful discovery” on meritorious constitutional claims. Id., at _______. This time around, Alabama has adopted a new protocol concerning a never-before-used method of execution. Consistent with Alabama’s “familiar veil of secrecy over its capital punishment procedures,” it has released only a “heavily redacted” version of that protocol. 2024 WL 116303, *3. Smith should be allowed to complete discovery and litigate the merits of his claims challenging this new protocol in the ordinary course. That information is important not only to Smith, who has an extra reason to fear the gurney, but to anyone the State seeks

      2 See, e.g., US: Alarm Over Imminent Execution in Alabama, United Nations (Jan. 16, 2024), https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-briefing-notes/ 2024/01/us-alarm-over-imminent-execution-alabama; United States: UN Experts Alarmed at Prospect of First-Ever Untested Execution by Nitrogen Hypoxia in Alabama, United Nations (Jan. 3, 2024), https://www. ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2024/01/united-states-un-experts-alarmed

      prospect-first-ever-untested-execution. More

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      Supreme Court Declines to Stop Nitrogen Execution in Alabama

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      Both the Supreme Court and a federal appeals court denied stays sought by Kenneth Smith, who is scheduled to die on Thursday in the nation’s first nitrogen gas execution.The U.S. Supreme Court and a federal appeals court each declined on Wednesday to intervene to stop Alabama from conducting the nation’s first-ever execution by nitrogen gas, putting the state on track to use the novel method to kill a death row prisoner.Alabama plans to use nitrogen gas to kill Kenneth Smith, who was convicted of a 1988 murder, after the state botched its previous attempt to execute him by lethal injection in November 2022. Barring any additional legal interventions, prison officials plan to bring him to the execution chamber in Atmore, Ala., on Thursday evening, place a mask on his face and pump nitrogen into it, depriving him of oxygen until he dies.The Supreme Court declined to intervene in Mr. Smith’s appeal of a state court case, in which his lawyers had argued that the second execution attempt would violate his Eighth Amendment right to be free from cruel and unusual punishments. The court’s order did not include an explanation or note any dissents.Hours later, in response to a separate challenge by Mr. Smith’s lawyers, a federal appeals court also declined to halt the execution over the dissent of one of the three judges who had heard the case. Mr. Smith’s lawyers said they would also appeal that case to the Supreme Court, potentially giving the justices another chance to intervene, though they have been reluctant to do so in last-minute death penalty appeals in recent years.Nitrogen gas has been used in assisted suicide in Europe and elsewhere, and the state’s lawyers contend that the method — known as nitrogen hypoxia — is painless and will quickly cause Mr. Smith to lose consciousness before he dies.But Mr. Smith and his lawyers have said they fear the state’s newly created protocol is not sufficient to prevent problems that could cause Mr. Smith severe suffering. The lawyers said in court papers that if the mask were a poor fit, it could allow oxygen in and prolong Mr. Smith’s suffering, or if he becomes nauseous, he could be “left to choke on his own vomit.”The execution is scheduled to take place around 6 p.m. Central time at the William C. Holman Correctional Facility, though it could be carried out any time until 6 a.m. the next morning. Mr. Smith has recently reported feeling increasingly nauseous as his anxiety grows about the looming execution, raising his lawyers’ fears about a mishap during the execution. Alabama prison officials said this week that they do not plan to allow him to have any food after 10 a.m. on Thursday in an effort to lower the likelihood that he vomits.Abbie VanSickle More

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      Harris Begins a Reproductive Rights Tour on 51st Anniversary of Roe

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      The administration’s task force on reproductive rights also announced what officials said were new steps to help Americans get contraceptives and abortions under an emergency care law.Vice President Kamala Harris will travel to Wisconsin on Monday morning to host an event in support of abortion rights while President Biden brings together a task force on reproductive health care in Washington.Both events are designed to call attention to the 51st anniversary of Roe v. Wade, the landmark Supreme Court ruling that established a constitutional right to abortion, and to announce new steps that Mr. Biden’s administration has taken to support abortion access since the court struck it down in 2022.“Even as Americans — from Ohio to Kentucky to Michigan to Kansas to California — have resoundingly rejected attempts to limit reproductive freedom, Republican elected officials continue to push for a national ban and devastating new restrictions across the country,” Mr. Biden said in a statement. “On this day and every day, Vice President Harris and I are fighting to protect women’s reproductive freedom.”Ms. Harris, who has become the administration’s most vocal defender of abortion rights, chose Wisconsin as the backdrop for the first in a series of abortion rights events her office has planned around the country through the spring. Kirsten Allen, the vice president’s press secretary, said that Ms. Harris’s office had planned several more stops, over the next two to three months, in “states that have enshrined protections, restricted access and states that continue to threaten access, causing chaos and confusion.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?  More