Us Vs Elonis

fear of a disturbance is not enough to overcome free speech, Terminiello v. Chicago. What

While, reading the case, Elonis v. United States, I was astonished to see that someone would post something so explicit, offensive, and inhumane. Basically, the case of Elonis v. United States is about a man named Anthony Elonis who is an upcoming rapper and used his stage name, Tone Dougie. His Facebook page consisted of him posting disturbing rap lyrics. Even though Elonis was going through a divorce with his former wife, which did not stop him from writing and posting crude lyrics. Eventually, it got to the point where his wife felt that she was being targeted by his lyrics. According to an article on, New York Times, Elonis wrote that he wanted to see a Halloween costume that included his wife’s “head” on a stick. Obviously, she felt threatened and reported the assaults to the police. Anthony Elonis was convicted for posting threats that targeted his wife, his coworkers, police officers, a kindergarten class, and even an FBI agent. Although Elonis argued that his posting are not considered to be a “true threat” and that he is protected under the First Amendment. I believe he wanted to cause fear towards his wife, Tara and therefore, is his lyrics are a true threat. Basically, a true threat is defined as something a person would consider to be “purposely” harmful and cause pain. Elonis mentioned that his post were not offended nor were the threatening anybody. He stated that he did not have the intent of trying to harm anyone, he was just trying

“Congress shall make no law…abridging the freedom of speech.” (Jacobus 93). Just like the Freedom of Religion there are limitations placed on the Freedom of Speech so that other people’s rights aren’t compromised. For example, people are not allowed to present true threats, or “fighting words” to another person. This restriction was put into play in the court case of Chaplinsky vs. New Hampshire. The Court ruled that “fighting words, by their very utterance inflict injury or tend to incite an immediate breach of the peace and may be punished consistent with the First Amendment.” (Ruane 3-4). In this case if someone was to use “fighting words” which is their perceived freedom of speech, it would not only violate the law, it could violate someone’s freedom of pursue life, liberty, and happiness. With this, we can see that freedom is not always as it

As of today, the supreme court has interpreted the first amendment to say “The First Amendment provides no protection for obscenity, child pornography, or speech that constitutes what has become widely known as “fighting words.” The First Amendment provides less than full protection to commercial speech, defamation (libel and slander), speech that may be harmful to children, speech broadcast on radio and television (as opposed to speech transmitted via cable or the Internet), and public employees’ speech.”(Ruane, Kathleen Ann) with this loose definition in mind many people have begun to think whether freedom of speech should be further limited to several cases seen in recent years such as what happened in Charlottesville, Virginia.

For example, in the case of Elonis v. United States, the Supreme Court had the opportunity to address this increasingly relevant issue in deciding whether an individual’s Facebook posts qualified as true threats. Elonis was charged in accordance to Section 875(c) of U.S. Law. Section 875(c) governs the class of statements that do not enjoy First Amendment protections because they constitute true threats. As aforementioned previously, while the Supreme Court has upheld the protections of free speech, this trial marks an instance where true threats were declared as a category of speech unprotected by the First Amendment. When analyzing statutory provisions that reference true threats, however, the Court has applied varying intent standards to the crimes, without referencing the First Amendment implications of these statements. (Best 1132) Even so, the significance of Elonis v. United States is unequivocal-the Court ruled that the First Amendment does not protect legitimate or “true” threats, and that any speech that targets or endangers the wellbeing of another is not free speech and can be

Justice Brennan delivered the opinion of the Court. Roth ran a business in New York by selling books, photos, and magazines. Roth was charged with 4 counts for sending inappropriate circulars and an inappropriate book. The Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit upheld Roth’s appeal. Alberts was prosecuted for the sale of lewd books, and for writing inappropriate advertisements within the books. Albert’s conviction was upheld by a lower court. The Court must decide if indecent material is protected by the freedom of speech and press in the First Amendment. All ideas, even the most foolish, controversial, and intolerable, are protected by free speech. The only exception is when they interfere in more important safeties. However, indecency has been demonstrated to have no redeeming

The Supreme Court case, Packingham v. North Carolina (2016) debates whether convicted and registered sex offenders should be limited in their social media usage on platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, which are most predominantly populated by minors. The constitutionality of North Carolina’s criminal law is being debated as it considers it a felony for any person registered as a sex offender in the state of North Carolina to have an account on social media sites such as Facebook, or any social media platforms that allow minors to have an account. The current North Carolina law is unconstitutional as it limits a clear example of free speech, and does so in a very broad and unjustified way,

In result to this case, the majority of the court noted that the Texas law discriminated upon the law. They feel that this act might bring up anger in other people and more flag burning. The majority of the court also agreed that Johnson had the right to use that form of symbolic speech because it is protected by the first amendment. They find this act is very offensive, but the society’s outrage alone is not justification for depressing Johnson’s freedom of speech.

The court's decision was that it was wrong of the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals to deny the inmate's right to appeal the case. The Supreme Court reviewed the case and found that the murderer was most likely the husband and not Paul Gregory House (“House v. Bell”). The case decision would cause the denial of habeas corpus to be removed and the case would be instated with the help of the new evidence.

Finally, the district court applied Texas law to hold that the EEOC could not recover for Rafiq 's mental anguish because there was no evidence that the anguish or stress that Rafiq suffered "was so debilitating that it interrupted his daily life." In reaching this conclusion, the district court erred in two ways: (1) the availability of mental anguish damages for a Title VII claim is determined by federal law, not state law; and (2) the district court did not view the evidence in the light most favorable to the EEOC.

This is the primary flaw in Elonis’ argument of standing behind the First Amendment and shouting freedom of speech. Anthony Elonis shared his words via social media to threaten and intimidate others.

The majority consisted of Justice Earl Warren, Hugo L. Black, William O. Douglas, Tom C. Clark, John M. Harlan II, William J. Brennan, Jr., Potter Stewart, Byron R. White, and Arthur J. Goldberg. The majority opinion was made by William J. Brennan, to protect the right to freedom of expression in the First Amendment, the Court rule that the criminal libel law should follow the same standards as civil libel law. True statements regardless of its malicious value will not be considered libel. While statements that are intentionally false or created with a rash disregard for the truth are considered to be libel and can be punished by the law. The restriction was modeled from a prior case, New York Times v. Sullivan, freedom of speech protection should not be exercise separately to a civil libel statute than to a criminal case. The Court concluded that the Louisiana Criminal Defamation Statute was unlawfully broad and that it breaches the protections of the First Amendment’s free

8. Reason: We can understand the policy rational of the Court in making this decision. Being that there was no explicit law on the books, the Court felt that the best interest of society would call for an establishment of such a rule to allow the case to be heard. As such it is possible for a reasonable person

In my own unbiased opinion, I find Mr. Fields not guilty of his conviction. I concur with the court of appeals in that Mr. Fields’s First Amendment right of free speech has been

He believed that not letting the people hear about the information that he knew could hurt them. I do not know enough about whether or not his beliefs were true, and that’s not the point. He used his opinions and ethics against the laws and the people who were enforcing the laws, believing that it wouldn’t hurt anybody. It is not my place to call whether or not any of this was true. It was the court’s decision. And he did not let the court make their decision. I disagree with this. He broke a law, and he knew that he was breaking it. Anybody else who broke this law would have to be punished under normal circumstances. Not serving the punishment is basically just self preservation and in the person’s own self interest. If it was a special circumstance, then those who enforce the law would be able to make the call of whether or not he was in the right, since that is their area of