White Women vs Free Speech: And Google is going to get sued.

http://www.dailynews.com/general-news/20170316/south-la-man-convicted-of-writing-hate-speech-on-lgbt-center

South LA man convicted of writing hate speech on LGBT Center
Los Angeles City Attorney Mike Feuer, pictured here, announced that Damario Brown, 23, was sentenced to 36 months of probation and nine days in jail after pleading guilty to writing hate speech on a Los Angeles LGBT Center in graffiti. (File photo by John McCoy/LA Daily News)
Los Angeles City Attorney Mike Feuer, pictured here, announced that Damario Brown, 23, was sentenced to 36 months of probation and nine days in jail after pleading guilty to writing hate speech on a Los Angeles LGBT Center in graffiti. (File photo by John McCoy/LA Daily News)

By Wes Woods, Los Angeles Daily News

Posted: 03/16/17, 1:25 PM PDT | Updated: on 03/16/2017
0 Comments

A 23-year-old South Los Angeles man was sentenced to 36 months of probation and nine days in jail after pleading guilty to writing hate speech on a Los Angeles LGBT Center in graffiti.

Damario Brown, who lives in Leimert Park in South L.A., was also given 45 days of graffiti removal duties and ordered to stay away from the center, L.A. City Attorney Mike Feuer said.
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“In these increasingly precarious times, it’s particularly important that my office stand at the forefront in protecting all our residents against acts of violence and hate,” Feuer said in a statement.

On Feb. 9, the center’s director of facilities reported an unidentified individual had spray-painted the phrase “F--k Trannies” as well as other slurs on the front-facing wall of the center’s village at Ed Gould Plaza, according to Feuer.

• RELATED STORY: LA County groups fear rise in hate crimes on day of Trump’s inauguration

The location of the incident was at 1125 N. McCadden Place, and officers identified Brown after seeing him on surveillance video at the site.

Brown was arrested on March 9 and Chadd Kim of the city attorney’s Special Trials Unit successfully prosecuted the case.

“This hateful incident was not an isolated event,” said Los Angeles LGBT Center CEO Lorri L. Jean in a statement. “There have been a rash of similar incidents targeting LGBT centers nationwide. We are living in a very different climate when LGBT people, Muslim people, Jewish people and others are increasingly under attack, but we must remain resilient. We’re grateful to the Los Angeles Police Department and to City Attorney Mike Feuer.”

• RELATED STORY: LA law enforcement officials vow crackdown on ‘un-American’ hate crimes

Others making comment were Councilmen David Ryu and Mitch O’Farrell.

“We will not tolerate hate or bullying of any form. Los Angeles is and will continue to be a place of refuge for all,” Ryu said in a statement. “I commend the city attorney’s office for their work prosecuting this case and protecting our residents.”

“Messages of hate and violence will not be tolerated in the city of Los Angeles,” added O’Farrell, who is openly gay and shares representation of the Los Angeles LGBT Center in Hollywood. “I commend our city attorney for taking swift action regarding this crime, and for working with my office to create an environment where our diversity is celebrated and one’s truth is respected.”

A restitution hearing for Brown is set for April 27.

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Hate Speech Cases

https://www.thoughtco.com/hate-speech-cases-721215

by Tom Head
Updated February 19, 2017

The U.S. Supreme Court has issued six major landmark rulings on hate speech law since 1949.
Terminiello v. Chicago (1949)
2008 Supreme Court Rulings
Photo: Alex Wong / Getty Images.

Fr. Arthur Terminiello did for the Archdiocese of Chicago what mononucleosis did for kissing booths. A raging antisemite and right-wing lunatic, he gave a speech in Chicago that prompted protestors outdoors to riot. The city of Chicago arrested him under a law banning riotous speech, but the Supreme Court overturned his conviction.

[F]reedom of speech...," Justice William O. Douglas wrote for the 5-4 majority, is "protected against censorship or punishment, unless shown likely to reduce a clear and present danger of a serious substantive evil that rises far above public inconvenience, annoyance, or unrest ... There is no room under our Constitution for a more restrictive view."
Brandenburg v. Ohio (1969)

No organization has been more aggressively or justifiably pursued on grounds of hate speech than the Ku Klux Klan. But the arrest of an Ohio Klansman named Clarence Brandenburg on criminal syndicalism charges, based on a KKK speech that recommended overthrowing the government, was overturned in a ruling that has protected radicals of all political persuasions ever since. Writing for the unanimous Court, Justice William Brennan argued that "the constitutional guarantees of free speech and free press do not permit a State to forbid or proscribe advocacy of the use of force or of law violation except where such advocacy is directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action."
National Socialist Party v. Skokie (1977)

When the National Socialist Party of America was declined a permit to speak in Chicago, the organizers turned to the small, ethnically Jewish town of Skokie—where 1/6th of the Jewish population was made up of families that had survived the Holocaust. County authorities attempted to block the Nazi march, but their efforts were overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court in a terse ruling. After the ruling, the city of Chicago granted the Nazis three permits to march; the Nazis, in turn, decided to cancel their plans to march in Skokie.
R.A.V. v. City of St. Paul (1992)

After a teenager burned a makeshift cross on the lawn of an African-American couple, the St. Paul Bias Motivated Crime Ordinance—which prohibited symbols that "[arouse] anger, alarm or resentment in others on the basis of race, color, creed, religion or gender"—came into effect. In a unanimous ruling written by Justice Antonin Scalia, the Court held that the ordinance was excessively broad.
Virginia v. Black (2003)

11 years after the St. Paul case, the U.S. Supreme Court revisited the issue of cross-burning after three people were arrested separately for violating a Virginia ban. In a 5-4 ruling written by Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, the Supreme Court held that while cross-burning may constitute illegal intimidation in some cases, a ban on the public burning of crosses would violate the First Amendment. "[A] State may choose to prohibit only those forms of intimidation," Justice O'Connor wrote, "that are most likely to inspire fear of bodily harm."
Snyder v. Phelps (2011)

Westboro Baptist Church has made a career out of being reprehensible. The organization, which came to national prominence by gleefully picketing the funeral of Matthew Shepard, later moved on to celebrating the 9/11 attacks and picketing military funerals. The family of Lance Corporal Matthew Snyder, killed in Iraq in 2006, sued Westboro—and its leader, Fred Phelps—for intentional infliction of emotional distress.

In an 8-1 ruling, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld Westboro's right to picket. While acknowledging that Westboro's "contribution to public discourse may be negligible," Chief Justice John Roberts's ruling rested in existing U.S. hate speech precedent: "Simply put, the church members had the right to be where they were."

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

United States
Constitutional framework

The protection of civil rights, including freedom of speech, was not written into the original 1789 Constitution of the United States but was added two years later with the Bill of Rights, implemented as several amendments to the Constitution. The First Amendment, ratified December 15, 1791, states:

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.

The 14th Amendment, ratified on July 9, 1868, clarifies that this prohibition applies to laws of the states as well.
Supreme Court case law
See also: Pruneyard Shopping Center v. Robins

Some limits on expression were contemplated by the framers and have been defined by the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS). Starting in the 1940s U.S states began passing hate speech laws. In Beauharnais v. Illinois the Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the state of Illinois's hate speech laws. Illinois's laws punished expression that was offensive to racial ethnic and religious groups. After Beauharnais v. Illinois, the Supreme Court developed a free speech jurisprudence that loosened most aspects of the free speech doctrine.[87] In 1942, Justice Frank Murphy summarized the case law: "There are certain well-defined and limited classes of speech, the prevention and punishment of which have never been thought to raise a Constitutional problem. These include the lewd and obscene, the profane, the libelous and the insulting or 'fighting' words – those which by their very utterances inflict injury or tend to incite an immediate breach of the peace."[88]

Traditionally, however, if the speech did not fall within one of the above categorical exceptions, it was protected speech. In 1969, the Supreme Court protected a Ku Klux Klan member’s speech and created the "imminent danger" test to determine on what grounds speech can be limited. The court ruled in Brandenburg v. Ohio that; "The constitutional guarantees of free speech and free press do not permit a state to forbid or proscribe advocacy of the use of force, or of law violation except where such advocacy is directed to inciting imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action."[89]

This test has been modified very little from its inception in 1969 and the formulation is still good law in the United States. Only speech that poses an imminent danger of unlawful action, where the speaker has the intention to incite such action and there is the likelihood that this will be the consequence of his or her speech, may be restricted and punished by that law.

In R.A.V. v. City of St. Paul, (1992), the issue of banning hate speech arose again when a gang of white people burned a cross in the front yard of a black family. The local ordinance in St. Paul, Minnesota, criminalized such expressions considered racist and the teenager was charged thereunder. Associate Justice Antonin Scalia, writing for the Supreme Court, held that the prohibition against hate speech was unconstitutional as it contravened the First Amendment. The Supreme Court struck down the ordinance. Scalia explicated the fighting words exception as follows: “The reason why fighting words are categorically excluded from the protection of the First Amendment is not that their content communicates any particular idea, but that their content embodies a particularly intolerable (and socially unnecessary) mode of expressing whatever idea the speaker wishes to convey”.[90] Because the hate speech ordinance was not concerned with the mode of expression, but with the content of expression, it was a violation of the freedom of speech. Thus, the Supreme Court embraced the idea that speech in general is permissible unless it will lead to imminent violence.[91] The opinion noted "This conduct, if proved, might well have violated various Minnesota laws against arson, criminal damage to property", among a number of others, none of which was charged, including threats to any person, not to only protected classes.

In 2011, the Supreme Court issued their ruling on Snyder v. Phelps, which concerned the right of the Westboro Baptist Church to protest with signs found offensive by many Americans. The issue presented was whether the 1st Amendment protected the expressions written on the signs. In an 8–1 decision the court sided with Fred Phelps, the head of Westboro Baptist Church, thereby confirming their historically strong protection of freedom of speech, so long as it doesn't promote imminent violence. The Court explained, "speech deals with matters of public concern when it can 'be fairly considered as relating to any matter of political, social, or other concern to the community' or when it 'is a subject of general interest and of value and concern to the public."[92]
Societal implementation

In the 1980s and 1990s, more than 350 public universities adopted "speech codes" regulating discriminatory speech by faculty and students.[93] These codes have not fared well in the courts, where they are frequently overturned as violations of the First Amendment.[94] Debate over restriction of "hate speech" in public universities has resurfaced with the adoption of anti-harassment codes covering discriminatory speech.[95]
NTIA report

In 1992, Congress directed the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) to examine the role of telecommunications, including broadcast radio and television, cable television, public access television, and computer bulletin boards, in advocating or encouraging violent acts and the commission of hate crimes against designated persons and groups. The NTIA study investigated speech that fostered a climate of hatred and prejudice in which hate crimes may occur.[96] The study failed to link telecommunication to hate crimes, but did find that "individuals have used telecommunications to disseminate messages of hate and bigotry to a wide audience." Its recommendation was that the best way to fight hate speech was through additional speech promoting tolerance, as opposed to government regulation.[97][98]
Combating Hate Speech
The EU sponsored 'No Hate Speech' [99]actively raises awareness about Hate Speech helping to combat the problem . A growing awareness of the problem has resulted in increasing teaching in school of the issue, with enhanced reporting often occurring ([100]).

This argument has become a "Let's get Max" session. I have no problem with that (it massages my ego) but I would rather have a rational discussion based on facts. Osso has stated that she agrees with Emmett... I think she spoke without thinking about it just because I upset her. But I would like her to clarify her position.

Let's be clear about what the First Amendment says.
- Holocaust Denial is protected Speech.
- Calling for "revengeance" on Blacks and Jews is protected Speech
- Burning crosses in a KKK rally on private land they own is protected speech.
- Carrying signs that say "God hates Fags" is protected Speech.
- Saying that women suck as engineers is protected speech.

- Destroying property ("Vandalism") is not protected speech.
- Harrassing or threatening individuals is not protected speech.
- Defaming or violating the privacy of individuals is not protected speech.

The First Amendment draws a very clear line. The restrictions on the Freedom of Speech are very narrow, and almost always involve personal harm to property or an individual. Disparaging a group (without inciting a direct call to violence) is protected. The US courts have made this very clear.

This cut and paste spree... including an article about "Benjamin 'Ben' Dover's" time in jail isn't really what you support, is it Osso?

thanks..

I'm fairly free speechy. Mario Savio, rest in peace.

Over insults? we'd be jailing little boys and girls.
Threats, certainly.
Hate, some of that is regular taunts and if we followed all of that up we'd need a lot more court houses. I think it would be better to nail hating stalkers.
Insults? Have you visited A2k?

Bull ****.

Hate speech in certain context is a crime and is enforced from local jurisdictions all the way to the FBI, people have been arrested, tried and convicted and had their convictions upheld by the Supreme Court for most of a century to now.

Care to make an apology for the nasty things and mis-truths you've made about me???????

Sure... and that context always involves something other than speech; for example intimidation of an individual or destruction of property. Carrying signs that say "God Hates Fags" or "Women are horrible Engineers" in public is protected speech. Spray painting "God Hates Fags" on a church or a school isn't protected.

The line is pretty clear. Of course, in the context of a private business, the First Amendment doesn't apply anyway.

This may be a new concept to you, Max, but I am trying to figure out what I think here. Piss off.

I have disagreed with what you have said. I won't apologize for that. And I think that some of your posts are ridiculous, and even stupid . I won't apologize for that either. Intelligent people can make stupid ridiculous posts... neither of these are attacks on you as a person.

If I have said anything nasty or untrue about you as a person (rather than about your posts) than I will certainly apologize. If you care to post the quote where you think I am attacking you (rather than what you wrote) I will give you an apology right away.

Disagreement isn't hate speech.

Petty childish insults may cowardly but they don't rise to the level of hate speech.

We don't allow people to yell 'fire' in crowded theaters, either.

Hate speech is made with an intent to make classes of people feel anything from discomfort in a hostile atmosphere to overt threats and violence.

There are a lot of people here who use the internet to say things they'd never ever say to someone else's face. All simple assault requires is menacing someone without even using any physical contact. Hate speech would be enough.

That's not a new concept for us at all Osso. In fact, if memory serves, you have said those exact words to me before. You said you agree with E. Grogan, you can tell me what you meant, or not... it's your choice.

It is not my aim to upset you. But inevitably I do anyway. I have nothing against you.

Emmett,

It is a fact that people walk around in public with giant signs that say "God Hates Fags". These people are protected under the First Amendment. I consider this as creating a "hostile atmosphere" for homosexuals... don't you agree? And yet it is protected speech in the US under the Constitution.

Do you accept this? I don't know why we are arguing about this so much. These questions have been resolved definitively by the Supreme Court.

So, you say there is a definition for it, which I agree I should have guessed. I somewhat think the two modes can work together, some of the time, kids living in hostile environments of varying sorts, aging to adult years. Some of us here have been serious meanies or non serious, or being playful.. but not, that I remember, threatening, but that would have been removed.

I await being sequestered in a chamber for calling Trump 'Liver Lips'.

This thread, like all your threads, has become a poor poor Max, woe is me bawling session.

You have no idea how sick you make me feel.

It's so true. That's why you can't stay away from this thread.

You are always there for me. That's why I love you Izzy!

Er, I'm no psychiatrist - I was thinking of changing majors back in uni, but backed off. I thought all of that too sloppy. That was, of course, then.

It is one thing to stand on a street corner and say this crap freely, it is protected speech and I have no problem at all with that designation.

Start jumping in front of gays in a confrontational manner with that crap without even laying a hand on anyone and it has become hate speech - that is speech made with the intent to create fear, intimidation and a hostile environment and you are using hate speech and you are subject to assault charges.

Why do think otherwise???? The law says you're wrong. Law enforcement says you're wrong, the courts say you're wrong.

Google had the right to do what they did. He had the right to do what he did and the responsibility to face the consequences for freely speaking his crap denigrating women as a class in the wrong venue. He should have saved that crap for a sports bar or his alt-right drum circle..

Osso - there are two things at play here, one Trump is a public figure who doesn't have as complete protections from totally free speech as you and I have.

The second thing is screaming it in his face just might get you you sequestered, you are allowed to yell it at him while he's driving past in a motorcade on his way to play more golf in six months than Barrack Obama did in eight years.

Think of it as Second Amendment rights. You are free to fire your weapons, but firing them in the city limits is not protected.

Why are you putting words in my mouth. I agree with this 100%... in fact I said the same thing myself a posts ago. I hope you are not just arguing for the sake of arguing.

If we are now in agreement, there is no need to keep arguing about this point.



Whether Google had the right to fire this engineer will be decided by the courts (if Google doesn't settle and pay this guy off before it gets that far). Google also has to face the consequences of their decision (news reports today show a canceled company meeting and unhappiness with their decision from some significant percentage of their employees).

But there is no sense of you and I arguing on points where we agree.

Don't take my word for it. Here's how the Supreme Court ruled on it:

In 1942, Justice Frank Murphy summarized the case law: "There are certain well-defined and limited classes of speech, the prevention and punishment of which have never been thought to raise a Constitutional problem. These include the lewd and obscene, the profane, the libelous and the insulting or 'fighting' words – those which by their very utterances inflict injury or tend to incite an immediate breach of the peace."

What don't you get?

He may get to court but he certainly will not prevail. Even you won't put $20 on it at 5:1 odds. The SCOTUS has consistently and for decades ruled against his right to vent in the wrong forum.