Clarence Thomas Wants to Go After Freedom of the Press

ZeroCool@feddit.ch to politics @lemmy.world – 563 points – Clarence Thomas Wants to Go After Freedom of the Press
rollingstone.com

The Supreme Court on Tuesday declined to review a challenge to its landmark New York Times v. Sullivan ruling. Justice Clarence Thomas has some thoughts.

The 1964 ruling established limits on public officials’ ability to sue on grounds of defamation, as well as the need to prove a standard of “actual malice” by the outlet making the allegedly defamatory statements.

The Supreme Court declined to hear Blankenship v. NBC Universal, LLC, a lawsuit brought by coal magnate Don Blankenship, who in 2015 was convicted of a misdemeanor charge of conspiring to violate safety standards at a Virginia mine where an explosion killed 29 workers. Blankenship was sentenced to a year in prison and fined $250,000. Last year, the Supreme Court upheld the conviction. Blankenship then sued NBC Universal, alleging that the news company had defamed him by describing him as a “felon.” Lower courts ruled that NBC had not acted with “malice” in their statements, and the case was appealed to the Supreme Court.

While Justice Thomas concurred that Blankenship’s case did not require a ruling by the Supreme Court, he called for the justices to review the standard set by New York Times v. Sullivan “in an appropriate case.”

“I continue to adhere to my view that we should reconsider the actual-malice standard,” Thomas wrote,” referencing his previous opinion in Coral Ridge Ministries Media, Inc. v. Southern Poverty Law Center. “New York Times and the Court’s decisions extending it were policy-driven decisions masquerading as constitutional law,” he added, “the actual-malice standard comes at a heavy cost, allowing media organizations and interest groups ‘to cast false aspersions on public figures with near impunity.’”

The push from Thomas comes amid widespread media reporting on allegations of corruption and improper financial relationships involving the justice. A series of investigations by ProPublica and The New York Times have uncovered unreported gifts, real estate deals, and luxury perks given to Thomas by high-profile conservative figures — many of which were not reported in financial disclosures, or weighed as conflicts of interest in relevant cases.

In April, ProPublica reported on the extent of Thomas’ relationship with billionaire Harlan Crow. The real estate mogul gifted Thomas frequent rides on private jets, vacations to luxury resorts, and trips on his superyachts. Crow also purchased $133,000 in real estate from Thomas, and footed private school tuition bills for a child Thomas was raising.

Subsequent reporting has exposed Thomas’ relationship with other powerful conservative players, including the Koch brothers, oil tycoon Paul “Tony” Novelly, H. Wayne Huizenga, the former owner of the Miami Dolphins, and investor David Sokol.

Thomas has claimed that the omissions from his financial statements were nothing more than oversights and that he had been advised that “this sort of personal hospitality from close personal friends, who did not have business before the Court, was not reportable.”

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It's not a surprise, the Republicans are following the "How to Fascist: for Dummies" step by step book

And some Americans are just letting it happen, its kinda sad :/

Not just letting, actively voting for it.

And they feel proud for it.

Remember when Rs wore shirts that said “I’d rather be Russian than a Democrat”?

I remember when conservatives were loud and proud about "Better dead than red", now they cant even scream cause they got Putins big red hammer down their throats.

Russia isn't "red" (communist) anymore, which is what they objected to. Russia is now fascist, which they love. As much as you might like to believe otherwise, there's nothing inconsistent about their behavior.

No need to be rude. Fascists appropriate red hammers all the time. Lenin made it trendy.

  1. "Fascism" is not a synonym for "authoritarianism;" it's more specific than that. Lenin was authoritarian, but not fascist.

  2. What was rude about what I wrote?

What would you suggest we do? I’ve voted against this crap to no avail. I’ve supported causes to no avail. Nothing short of a very ugly, bloody revolution will change this, and likely not for the better.

If you look at Turkey or Hungary over the last decade, people were pissed when their governments became overreaching, but ultimately their authoritarian governments won and the people had little choice, no civil war, no grand uprising of the people. The US is going in the same direction and I doubt anything will happen that can stop it. But on the flip side dictators never last forever. Their power will wain and fall. But for most of us, that will last our entire lifetime, which is an awful future no one should be celebrating.

Don't give up my friend. Things suck for sure, but we have a little power left. Spread ideas, organize your community, organize your workplace, go vote for the least fascist of the candidates.

We probably can't save ourselves, but we can build a solid platform for others to use. Something about old men planting trees....

“Thomas wants to silence people who make him look bad and might restrict his sugar daddy from giving him money.”

Pretty much. He wants to be able to sue newspapers with impunity for writing about him and even if he doesn't win he hopes to get the courts to agree to keep them from writing about him long enough it becomes irrelevant. It's disgusting and disturbing coming from a judge sitting on the highest court. And any currently sitting Supreme Court Justice not speaking out against Thomas and requesting his resignation is complicit in his actions.

Conservatives will strip you of every right you have as long as they can get away with it.

Clarence Thomas is a corrupted piece of shit that should be in jail.

This would backfire so hard on the Republicans.

Fox News would go down in flames. Every conservative news outlet would be sued out of existence. Their entire media ecosystem is based on demonstrable lies.

Meanwhile actual newspapers would be laughing their asses off as court after court found that their stories were firmly based on observable reality.

Except the courts that are stacked with Federalist Society judges…

The right has been working a long game to fuck over the country. And got a big shortcut when McConnell blocked Obama’s nominee.

In jury trials, judges don't decide fact. It would be fine.

Bench trials most certainly do, and appeals courts all the way up to the Supreme Court are bench (judge) deciding the outcome.

Appeals courts NEVER decide fact. They are there to see if there has been an error of LAW.

Which are packed with conservative judges who happily twist their interpretation of to serve their partisan views.

coal magnate Don Blankenship, who in 2015 was convicted of a misdemeanor charge of conspiring to violate safety standards at a Virginia mine where an explosion killed 29 workers

Blankenship then sued NBC Universal, alleging that the news company had defamed him by describing him as a “felon.”

Eat shit, Bob!

Every statement from Clarence Thomas for the rest of time should end with, "...at least that's what the people who bought me this boat said I should say."

Can someone smarter than I please make this browser extension?

Of course he does. Fascist gonna fascist. He stated he wants to stick it to the liberals. Its his reason for getting up in the morning.

I just want to know if people are upvoting you because this is an unknown fact that people should be more aware of or because people just feel like this is true. Do you have a source for this statement?

Edit: Yeah - downvote me for asking a legit question. I guess you can kick the people out of reddit but not the reddit out of the people.

What part? That he wants to get even with liberals? One of his aids went on record saying that Thomas said it.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.businessinsider.com/clarence-thomas-told-clerks-he-wants-to-make-liberals-miserable-2022-6%3famp

Oh, geezus. Thank you for the link.

I just upvoted your original question. Not fair you're being down voted like that. It was a legit question.

Agreed, it's a legit question. I think some people are upset because you called them out.

I expect the Republicans to do nothing about this corrupt asshole. The lack of any kind of pushback from the Dems is worrying.

There is pushback, but if they try to do things in a legalistic manner, these things take time. Biden was very publicly setting the stage for further steps just a few days ago: https://www.theguardian.com/law/2023/oct/01/biden-supreme-court-maga

The democrats could follow the example of the republicans and abandon all norms and decency, which would allow them to play the game on a more equal playing field with the republicans, but in doing so, they would become what they are trying to stop.

They'd also be 30 years behind in stacking the courts and regulatory agencies with patsies.

If the shoe was on the other foot, then it would not surprise me one bit if the republicans tried storming the supreme court with a mob. Once you throw out norms and conventions and just stick to the pretense of them when it is convenient for you, then a lot becomes possible.

But if the democrats try to actually do things in a legalistic manner, that will take time. I'm already very relieved that they are at last publicly calling out the fascist behaviours of the extreme right media and republican party. For too long they have been pretending that it was all business as usual, while the USA democracy has already been in decline for decades.

Curious what pushback you'd like to see from Dems? I've heard many condemn him, but no actions taken, I assume because none are viable.

Why did "Dems" quickly become Biden? Is it because you found numerous quotes from Democratic Senators like Whitehouse and Van Hollen taking him to task? Biden criticized Thomas after his comments on contraception and marriage equality.

The lack of any kind of pushback from the Dems is worrying.

Dems don't do pushback.

But who is going to go after Clarence Thomas? That's the more important question.

unless you get a super majoirty of dems in the Senate, the chances of Thomas being impeached is zero.

...

...

Y-yes, correct; for legal reasons, impeachment is definitely, certainly, absolutely the only thing I am referring to.

Of course! We don't need freedom of the press! What we need is a special department that is able to change headlines at a moments notice so even past news can be changed! That way we can have an inner party within the government comprised of loyalists and patriots monitoring the proletarian masses for dissonance and inappropriate thoughts.

Heh. For some reason I have suddenly become deathly afraid of rats...

If they remove protections for the press, how long until FOX News goes into bankruptcy following a flood of defamation lawsuits? (Plus Newsmax, OAN, and other right wing "news organizations.")

Removing freedom of the press cuts both ways.

Removing freedom of the press cuts both ways.

Except when the judiciary is compromised.

This is the same guy who is in an interracial marriage and voted to illegalize interracial marriage. He literally can't be trusted with anything.

He didn't vote to make interracial marriage illegal. That's not come before the court (and likely will not, because people would actually flip the fuck out)

No, what Thomas did was write a dissent in Obergefell that tried to create a make believe difference between the historical precedent of marriage being only between a man and a woman, and the historical precedent of interracial marriage being just as illegal as gay marriage.

He says that what he does is fine and should be celebrated, but if people he doesn't like, do the same, they should rot in prison or be chemically castrated. (Both historically used punishments for being gay)

Close, he was saying these cases were susceptible to being overturned if they weren't reinforced with legislation. For fifty years, Roe was called a bad judicial decision, even by Joe Biden and needed to be solidified in legislation. This is the danger of the courts "legislating from the bench" instead of just deciding constitutionality.

You're thinking of Mitch McConnell. Thomas wrote in his opinion on overturning Roe v Wade that it should also be considered to overturn gay marriage and access to certain birth control methods, but left out anything about interracial marriage.

If everybody just stopped making fun of him, he wouldn't go after our freedom! /s

I'd very much like to see Mr. Thomas held accountable for his ethics, or lack thereof.

We'll see who gets their wish first.

Of course Thomas and the corrupt partisan court would seek to silence those who might expose him. Sadly there are only a small handful of actual journalists left who would do so.

Fuck you, Thomas. I hope all major news networks publish (even more) scathing exposés on every single shitty thing you’ve done.

Yeah, if I were fondling the escrow of finance, I would too.

I'm posting the content below in hope that someone can clarify what he's talking about. What I think I continue to read Thomas express is that he wants to pretty much throw out all laws that are not explicitly in the US Constitution. Because, when he says "The decisions have no relation to the text, history, or structure of the Constitution." he's saying 'The Constitution doesn't say a word about libel or malice therefore it should be left up to the states'. And, I have to ask, am I as ignorant as him in reading that Congress shall establish no law abridging the freedom of speech? How does that work, federally?
[Threaded because I've hit a character limit.]

What he said...

To be sure, the law was not static; “[i]n the first decades after the adoption of the Constitution,” the rule that “truth or good motives was no defense” to libel “was changed by judicial decision, statute or constitution in most States.” But from the founding until 1964, the law of defamation was “almost exclusively the business of state courts and legislatures.”

The Court usurped control over libel law and imposed its own elevated standard in New York Times Co. v. Sullivan. It decreed that the Constitution required “a federal rule that prohibits a public official from recovering damages for a defamatory falsehood relating to his official conduct unless he proves that the statement was made with ‘actual malice’—that is, with knowledge that it was false or with reckless disregard of whether it was false or not.”. The Court did not base this “actual malice” rule in the original meaning of the First Amendment. It limited its analysis of the historical record to a loose inference from opposition surrounding the Sedition Act of 1798 and primarily justified its constitutional rule by noting that 20th century state-court decisions and “the consensus of scholarly opinion apparently favor[ed] the rule.

I continue to adhere to my view that we should reconsider the actual-malice standard. “New York Times and the Court’s decisions extending it were policy-driven decisions masquerading as constitutional law.” The decisions have “no relation to the text, history, or structure of the Constitution.”

And the actual-malice standard comes at a heavy cost, allowing media organizations and interest groups “to cast false aspersions on public figures with near impunity.”. The Court cannot justify continuing to impose a rule of its own creation when it has not “even inquired whether the First or Fourteenth Amendment, as originally understood, encompasses an actual-malice standard.”

Petitioner Don Blankenship asks us to revisit New York Times. I agree with the Court’s decision not to take up that question in this case because it appears that Blankenship’s claims are independently subject to an actual-malice standard as a matter of state law. In an appropriate case, however, we should reconsider "NewYork Times" and our other decisions displacing state defamation law.

https://www.supremecourt.gov/orders/courtorders/101023zor_5i26.pdf

What Wikipedia says...

The origins of the United States' defamation laws pre-date the American Revolution; one influential case in 1734 involved John Peter Zenger and established precedent that "The Truth" is an absolute defense against charges of libel. Though the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution was designed to protect freedom of the press, for most of the history of the United States, the U.S. Supreme Court failed to use it to rule on libel cases. This left libel laws, based upon the traditional "Common Law" of defamation inherited from the English legal system, mixed across the states. The 1964 case New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, however, radically changed the nature of libel law in the United States by establishing that public officials could win a suit for libel only when they could prove the media outlet in question knew either that the information was wholly and patently false or that it was published "with reckless disregard of whether it was false or not". Later Supreme Court cases barred strict liability for libel and forbade libel claims for statements that are so ridiculous as to be obviously facetious. Recent cases have added precedent on defamation law and the Internet.

John Peter Zenger
In one of the most famous cases, New York City publisher John Peter Zenger was imprisoned for eight months in 1734 for printing attacks on the governor of the colony. Zenger won his case and was acquitted by jury in 1735 under the counsel of Andrew Hamilton.
Gouverneur Morris, a major contributor in the framing of the U.S. Constitution said, "The trial of Zenger in 1735 was the germ of American freedom, the morning star of that liberty which subsequently revolutionized America".

The First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution was designed specifically to protect freedom of the press. However, for most of the history of the United States, the Supreme Court neglected to use it to rule on libel cases. This left libel laws, based upon the traditional common law of defamation inherited from the English legal system, mixed across the states.

People v. Croswell The Zenger case did not, however, establish a precedent. In 1804 Harry Croswell lost a libel suit in People v. Croswell when the Supreme Court of New York refused to accept truth as a defense. The following year the New York State Legislature changed the law to allow truth as a defense against a libel charge, breaking with English precedent under which the truthfulness of the statements alone is not a defense. Other states and the federal government followed suit.

New York Times v. Sullivan
In 1964, however, the court issued an opinion in New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, 376 U.S. 254 (1964) dramatically changing the nature of libel law in the United States. In that case, the court determined that public officials could win a suit for libel only if they could demonstrate "actual malice" on the part of reporters or publishers. In that case, "actual malice" was defined as "knowledge that the information was false" or that it was published "with reckless disregard of whether it was false or not". This decision was later extended to cover "public figures", although the standard is still considerably lower in the case of private individuals.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_defamation_law

What the First Amendment says...

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances

What the Sedition Act of 1798 says...

An Act in Addition to the Act, Entitled "An Act for the Punishment of Certain Crimes Against the United States."

SECTION 1. Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America, in Congress assembled, That if any persons shall unlawfully combine or conspire together, with intent to oppose any measure or measures of the government of the United States, which are or shall be directed by proper authority, or to impede the operation of any law of the United States, or to intimidate or prevent any person holding a place or office in or under the government of the United States, from undertaking, performing or executing his trust or duty, and if any person or persons, with intent as aforesaid, shall counsel, advise or attempt to procure any insurrection, riot, unlawful assembly, or combination, whether such conspiracy, threatening, counsel, advice, or attempt shall have the proposed effect or not, he or they shall be deemed guilty of a high misdemeanor, and on conviction, before any court of the United States having jurisdiction thereof, shall be punished by a fine not exceeding five thousand dollars, and by imprisonment during a term not less than six months nor exceeding five years; and further, at the discretion of the court may be holden to find sureties for his good behaviour in such sum, and for such time, as the said court may direct.

SEC. 2. And be it farther enacted, That if any person shall write, print, utter or publish, or shall cause or procure to be written, printed, uttered or published, or shall knowingly and willingly assist or aid in writing, printing, uttering or publishing any false, scandalous and malicious writing or writings against the government of the United States, or either house of the Congress of the United States, or the President of the United States, with intent to defame the said government, or either house of the said Congress, or the said President, or to bring them, or either of them, into contempt or disrepute; or to excite against them, or either or any of them, the hatred of the good people of the United States, or to stir up sedition within the United States, or to excite any unlawful combinations therein, for opposing or resisting any law of the United States, or any act of the President of the United States, done in pursuance of any such law, or of the powers in him vested by the constitution of the United States, or to resist, oppose, or defeat any such law or act, or to aid, encourage or abet any hostile designs of any foreign nation against United States, their people or government, then such person, being thereof convicted before any court of the United States having jurisdiction thereof, shall be punished by a fine not exceeding two thousand dollars, and by imprisonment not exceeding two years.

SEC. 3. And be it further enacted and declared, That if any person shall be prosecuted under this act, for the writing or publishing any libel aforesaid, it shall be lawful for the defendant, upon the trial of the cause, to give in evidence in his defence, the truth of the matter contained in publication charged as a libel. And the jury who shall try the cause, shall have a right to determine the law and the fact, under the direction of the court, as in other cases.

SEC. 4. And be it further enacted, That this act shall continue and be in force until the third day of March, one thousand eight hundred and one, and no longer: Provided, that the expiration of the act shall not prevent or defeat a prosecution and punishment of any offence against the law, during the time it shall be in force.

https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/alien-and-sedition-acts

This is the best summary I could come up with:

The 1964 ruling established limits on public officials’ ability to sue on grounds of defamation, as well as the need to prove a standard of “actual malice” by the outlet making the allegedly defamatory statements.

“I continue to adhere to my view that we should reconsider the actual-malice standard,” Thomas wrote,” referencing his previous opinion in Coral Ridge Ministries Media, Inc. v. Southern Poverty Law Center.

The push from Thomas comes amid widespread media reporting on allegations of corruption and improper financial relationships involving the justice.

A series of investigations by ProPublica and The New York Times have uncovered unreported gifts, real estate deals, and luxury perks given to Thomas by high-profile conservative figures — many of which were not reported in financial disclosures, or weighed as conflicts of interest in relevant cases.

The real estate mogul gifted Thomas frequent rides on private jets, vacations to luxury resorts, and trips on his superyachts.

Subsequent reporting has exposed Thomas’ relationship with other powerful conservative players, including the Koch brothers, oil tycoon Paul “Tony” Novelly, H. Wayne Huizenga, the former owner of the Miami Dolphins, and investor David Sokol.

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