Congress shall make no law abridging - the freedom of speech - First Amendment to the Constitution
The iconic language of the First Amendment can be recited by schoolchildren, yet it is ignored by judges in Connecticut when the speech has been uttered by Alex Jones.
Since the modern interpretations of the First Amendment began in the late 1960s, opinions on matters of public interest have been protected speech, so long as some reasons for the opinions were articulated. The reasons can be inaccurate, and the opinions can be wild, bizarre or irrational. But if it is an opinion, it is protected speech, except in Connecticut and except if the speaker is Alex Jones.
Here is the backstory.
The tragedy of Sandy Hook, in which a young madman used his parents' rifle to slaughter 20 schoolchildren and six adults before killing himself, is a lifelong horror for the surviving family members and their friends. This tragedy is also a matter of public interest implicating the right to keep and bear arms, school security, mental health, and free speech.
When the First Amendment was ratified, America was a bold experiment in personal liberty. Yet, the First Amendment only restrained Congress. After the Civil War amendments were added to the Constitution, the courts interpreted the 14th Amendment so as to apply the First Amendment to the states as well.
Stated differently, in modern free speech jurisprudence, the First Amendment prohibits all branches of government - legislative, executive, and judicial - and all governments, local, state, and federal, from interfering with, or punishing the freedom of speech.
If the First Amendment were repealed, would we have free speech?
Those who believe that the law is only what is written down - called positivism - would say no. Those who believe that our immutable rights come from our humanity, called Natural Law theory. would say that we are naturally free whether the Constitution recognizes it or not. We all need to recognize the dangers of a state judiciary that writes down a negation of a fundamental liberty, expressing an opinion, by calling it a non-opinion.
That's what happened to Alex Jones.
After the Sandy Hook massacre, Jones opined that it did not happen as the press and the government related it; that it was a set-up by anti-gun activists using actors and props. He persisted in this and offered snippets of odd behavior by the participants in order to cast doubt on the official version of events. The government lies all the time, he argued.
His speech was absolutely protected under modern jurisprudence.
The controlling Supreme Court case is Brandenburg v. Ohio, which teaches that all innocuous public speech about matters of public interest is absolutely protected - even opinion, allegory, and satire - and all speech is innocuous when there is time for more speech to challenge it. When the parents of the murdered children sued Jones for defamation and mental distress, Jones moved to dismiss the complaints.
When a motion to dismiss is filed, the courts must rule quickly on the law. They must answer the question: Assuming all the allegations are true, does the complaint state a valid, lawful, constitutional claim? The judge to whom these cases were assigned did not rule quickly. She improperly ordered discovery, an exchange of documents between the litigants, prior to ruling on the motion to dismiss.
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