Opinion: Robocall case exposes a troubling free-speech split on the Supreme Court (via latimesopinion)
, which had been sued by the father of a Marine killed in Iraq whose funeral had been picketed by the anti-gay “church.” In his majority opinion Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. wrote: “As a nation we have chosen . . . to protect even hurtful speech on public issues to ensure that we do not stifle public debate.”
Flash forward to Monday’s robocall decision. Kavanaugh, in an opinion joined by Roberts and Justices Samuel A. Alito Jr. and Clarence Thomas, said the exception for government debt collectors was the sort of content-based regulation of speech that the court subjects to “strict scrutiny.” But three of the court’s liberal justices would have upheld the carveout for robocalls related to government debt collection.Justice Stephen G. Breyer, in an opinion joined by Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Elena Kagan, suggested that the court needn’t subject the debt-collection carveout to strict scrutiny because it concerned “commercial regulation,” not political speech.
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