You're wrong. Enforcing someone to refrain is exactly what he's talking about. You are asking someone to do something if you are asking them to refrain from speaking, as it's their liberty to speak.
I'd look at it the same as a police officer demanding things. It's not illegal for them to say whatever they want, and imply powers they don't have, but it's still coercive and an abuse of powers we've granted them.
Hopefully this ruling applies to more types of government speech.
I upvoted you because I think you made a great point—even though I don't completely agree. I feel that there is a point where speech, despite being allowed constitutionally, can be unacceptable. Not because it offends someone but because it is threatening, abusive, or demeaning. After all, verbally threatening someone is a crime (in most places) even though you're haven't actually harmed someone.
I don’t think so. I think there’s a pretty significant legal difference between ordering someone not to say something, and ordering them to specifically publicly say something that’s false.
The former has been tested and is (for some reason) within the bounds of the first amendment. While forcing someone to publicly say something false almost certainly is outside the bounds of the first amendment.
The argument goes that the government might be able to compel you not to speak, but they cannot compel you to speak against your wishes (and, in particular, to lie).
The precedent supports that to some degree, but it's really not clear.
Such clauses are basically impossible to enforce in the US. It's called 'Prior Restraint' and courts look extremely poorly on it. You can forbid people from lots of things, but forbidding them from saying certain things? You can do that if you are the government yourself... and basically no one else.
Exactly wrong; it's the job of the law to "be careful," not of the people.
Those of us accusing and talking about it have no power -- thus there is literally no harm, and possible good in, putting them on the defense about this.
edit: In fact, the First Amendment of the Constitution essentially directly upholds the idea of "people saying whatever they want" in this regard.
I mean, I don't agree with the top level comment here, but this isn't a reverse-free-speech issue. Courts are absolutely free to restrain what public officials can say.
E.g., a regulator cannot say "if you don't burn this book, we'll tax you out of existence" while a person could say "if you don't burn this book, I'll vote to have you taxed out of existence"
But then you still have the original problem: it's illegal to say the words, but it's also illegal to tell people not to say the words? You already know that there's explicit precedent that these words are considered indicative of illegal behavior, and you're just supposed to ignore that information in your effort to comply with the law?
That is an interesting point. But maybe we don't even need to preemptively define harmful speech. You could just say people are responsible for what they say and if somebody then harms someone based on what you said (and it was untrue), you have responsibility.
It would certainly reduce the chance people would say unsubstantiated and harmful things if it was enforced.
In a free society there should be no line. A person should be free to say absolutely anything. There is certainly a possibility of causing harm by way of your speech, but this should be handled post hoc, with a court determining damages.
America partially observes this with a watered-down doctrine of prior restraint, but it's got enough exceptions that it's not worth so much.
Hmm, OK, I see what you're saying. That sounds like a reasonable point.
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