१ जुलै, २०२१

"The case arises out of an initiative by Kamala Harris, when she was California’s Attorney General, to force nonprofits to disclose to the state the identities of their major donors...."

"It was generally assumed that Harris wanted to know the identities of donors to conservative organizations so that they could be harassed by various California agencies, or so that their identities could be leaked in order for them to be 'canceled' by left-wing activists.... The Supreme Court has long recognized that forced disclosure of association with a group can chill First Amendment rights.... In my view, this should not have been a difficult case. But the notoriously liberal Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals reversed the district court’s decision, and the vote in the Supreme Court was 6-3, with Justices Sotomayor, Kagan and Breyer dissenting. Justice Sotomayor made this very silly argument: 'The same scrutiny the Court applied when NAACP members in the Jim Crow South did not want to disclose their membership for fear of reprisals and violence now applies equally in the case of donors only too happy to publicize their names across the websites and walls of the organizations they support.'"

Writes John Hinderaker "SUPREME COURT FOILS DEMOCRATS’ ATTACK ON CONSERVATIVE NONPROFITS" (Power Line).

CORRECTION: The quote in the post title originally had Harris's position as California's Secretary of State, but it was California's Attorney General. Power Line has now corrected it, and, with a prompt from a reader, I've followed that correction.

1 टिप्पणी:

Ann Althouse म्हणाले...

Owen writes:

"I can only concur with Hinderaker that Sotomayor’s argument is foolish: to the point of not even being an argument. She ignores the central point of the case, which is the compulsion by the State to disclose the affiliation. Of *course* donors are always free to disclose the affiliation: it’s their money and their choice. But to know that one’s contribution will paint a target on one’s back? At which every nameless thug can take shots forever afterward? Deeply intimidating."