Packingham v. North Carolina
Packingham v. North Carolina | |
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Court membership | |
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Case opinions | |
Majority | Kennedy, joined by Ginsburg, Breyer, Sotomayor, Kagan |
Concurrence | Alito (in judgment), joined by Roberts, Thomas |
Gorsuch took no part in the consideration or decision of the case. | |
Laws applied | |
U.S. Const. amend. I |
Packingham v. North Carolina, 582 U.S. 98 (2017), is a case in which the
In 2010, Lester Gerard Packingham, a registered sex offender, posted on Facebook under a pseudonym to comment favorably on a recent traffic court experience. Packingham was then identified by police and charged with violating North Carolina's law. Packingham moved to dismiss the charges, arguing that the state's law violated the First Amendment. The trial court dismissed this motion and ultimately convicted Packingham. An appellate court initially reversed the trial court, holding that the law did violate the First Amendment, but the North Carolina Supreme Court, the state's highest court, disagreed and reinstated the conviction.
In June 2017, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously reversed the North Carolina Supreme Court's judgment. In the
Background
North Carolina statute
In 2008, the state of North Carolina passed a law that made it a felony for a
- be "operated by a person who derives revenue from membership fees, advertising, or other sources related to the operation of the Web site".[5]
- facilitate "the social introduction between two or more persons for the purposes of friendship, meeting other persons, or information exchanges".[5]
- allow "users to create Web pages or personal profiles that contain information such as the name or nickname of the user, photographs placed on the personal Web page by the user, other personal information about the user, and links to other personal Web pages on the commercial social networking Web site of friends or associates of the user that may be accessed by other users or visitors to the Web site".[5]
- provide "users or visitors... mechanisms to communicate with other users, such as a message board, chat room, electronic mail, or instant messenger".[5]
The law exempted websites that "Provid[e] only one of the following discrete services: photo-sharing, electronic mail, instant messenger, or chat room or message board platform", as well as websites that have as their primary purpose "the facilitation of commercial transactions involving goods or services between [their] members or visitors".[6]
Facts of the case
In 2002, Lester Gerard Packingham was convicted of taking "indecent liberties with a child", a felony that required him to register as a sex offender.
Lower court proceedings
Initially, Packingham moved to dismiss his indictment, arguing that it violated the First Amendment.[9] A North Carolina Superior Court judge denied this motion, and he was convicted of violating the North Carolina social media law.[10] Packingham appealed his conviction to the North Carolina Court of Appeals, which reversed the trial court's decision in 2013.[10] Applying intermediate scrutiny,[11] the court of appeals determined that North Carolina's law violated the First Amendment because it was too broad, applying to all registered sex offenders regardless of whether the offender had committed a crime involving a minor or whether the offender was a continuing threat of harm to minors.[10] The court of appeals also stated that the law had been defined broadly enough to prohibit a registered sex offender from conducting a wide array of Internet activity, such as "conducting a 'Google' search, purchasing items on Amazon.com, or accessing a plethora of Web sites unrelated to online communication with minors".[10]
In 2015, the
Supreme Court ruling
Packingham filed a petition for a writ of
Oral argument
The oral argument took place in February 2017. Packingham’s lawyer, David T. Goldberg, argued that the law banned “vast swaths of First Amendment activity”, went too far in restricting which Internet sites could be accessed, and forbade use of the Internet in general. The law targeted speech on some of the platforms that Americans use most often, Goldberg noted, and that under the law Packingham could not even use Twitter to read the myriad messages discussing his own case. He further noted that the law imposes punishment without regard to whether the offender actually did anything wrong.[14]
North Carolina’s senior
Opinion of the Court
In June 2017 the Supreme Court delivered a judgment in favor of Packingham, unanimously voting to reverse the state court.[15][16] Justice Anthony Kennedy explained the decision: "A fundamental principle of the First Amendment is that all persons have access to places where they can speak and listen, and then, after reflection, speak and listen once more." He continued that "By prohibiting sex offenders from using those websites, North Carolina with one broad stroke bars access to what for many are the principal sources for knowing current events, checking ads for employment, speaking and listening in the modern public square, and otherwise exploring the vast realms of human thought and knowledge." Citing Ashcroft v. Free Speech Coalition as a precedent, Kennedy also wrote: "It is well established that, as a general rule, the Government 'may not suppress lawful speech as the means to suppress unlawful speech'."
Concurring opinion
Justice Samuel Alito wrote an opinion concurring in the judgment, joined by John Roberts and Clarence Thomas. While Alito agreed that the law at issue violated the First Amendment, he noted that there are reasonable scenarios for which legal bans for sex offenders can be placed, such as for sites targeted at teenagers.[2]
Impact
Packingham v. North Carolina was one of the first U.S. Supreme Court cases to analyze the role of the First Amendment with respect to social media use.[17] According to Ashutosh Bhagwat, a law professor at the UC Davis School of Law, as of 2018 Packingham is one of only two cases heard by the Roberts Court that directly address new technologies up to that point, the other being Brown v. Entertainment Merchants Association (2011) with respect to video games.[18] Bhagwat speculated that this might change in the future, as "recent calls to regulate 'fake news' and otherwise impose filtering obligations on search engine and social media companies will inevitably raise important and difficult First Amendment issues".[19]
Effect on First Amendment case law
In an article published in the North Dakota Law Review, Katie Miller wrote that the Packingham decision may be used to challenge laws and restrictions in other states similar to the one in North Carolina.
Madeleine Burnette-McGrath, in an article published in the
See also
- List of United States Supreme Court cases, volume 582
- New York v. Ferber, 458 U.S. 747
- Ward v. Rock Against Racism, 491 U.S. 781
References
- Citations
- ^ a b "Packingham v. North Carolina". Oyez. Retrieved March 8, 2021.
- ^ a b Lecher, Colin (June 19, 2017). "Supreme Court strikes down North Carolina law banning sex offenders from social media". The Verge. Retrieved June 19, 2017.
- ^ Packingham v. North Carolina, slip op. at 7.
- ^ Packingham, 582 U.S. ___, slip op. at 1 (quoting N. C. Gen. Stat. Ann. §§14–202.5(a), (e) (2015)).
- ^ a b c d Packingham, 582 U.S. ___, slip op. at 1–2 (quoting N. C. Gen. Stat. Ann. §14–202.5(b)) (internal quotation marks omitted).
- ^ Packingham, 582 U.S. ___, slip op. at 2 (quoting N. C. Gen. Stat. Ann. §14–202.5(c)).
- ^ Packingham, 582 U.S. ___, slip op. at 2.
- ^ a b Packingham, 582 U.S. ___, slip op. at 3.
- ^ Packingham, 582 U.S. ___ (2017), slip op. at 3.
- ^ a b c d e Grossman, Perry (March 1, 2017). "Packingham v. North Carolina is a First Amendment test case in the age of Trump". Slate.com. Retrieved May 3, 2017.
- ^ a b Nicholas Halliburton (February 27, 2017). "Packingham v. North Carolina | LII / Legal Information Institute". Law.cornell.edu. Retrieved May 3, 2017.
- ^ Packingham, 582 U.S. ___ (2017), slip op. at 4 (quoting 386 N.C., at 381, 777 S.E. 2d, at 741).
- ^ Liptak, Adam (February 28, 2017). "A Constitutional Right to Facebook and Twitter? Supreme Court Weighs In". The New York Times. p. A9. Retrieved December 5, 2017.
- ^ a b c "Argument analysis: Justices skeptical about social media restrictions for sex offenders". SCOTUSblog.com. February 27, 2017. Retrieved May 3, 2017.
- ^ The Supreme Court, 2016 Term — Leading Cases, 131 Harv. L. Rev. 233 (2017).
- ^ David T. Goldberg and Emily R. Zhang, Our Fellow American, the Registered Sex Offender, 2016–2017 Cato Sup. Ct. Rev. 59 (2017).
- ^ Burnette-McGrath 2019, p. 118.
- ^ Bhagwat 2018, pp. 1328–29.
- ^ Bhagwat 2018, p. 1329.
- ^ a b Miller 2018, p. 139.
- ^ Burnette-McGrath 2019, p. 124.
- ^ Burnette-McGrath 2019, p. 125.
- ^ a b Burnette-McGrath 2019, p. 126.
- Sources
- Bhagwat, Ashutosh (2018). "Candides and Cassandras: Technology and Free Speech on the Roberts Court". Washington University Law Review. 95 (6): 1327–1352. Retrieved March 17, 2021.
- Burnette-McGrath, Madeleine (2019). "Packingham v. North Carolina". Ohio Northern University Law Review. 44 (1): 117–129. Retrieved March 17, 2021.
- Miller, Katie (2018). "Constitutional Law - Sex Offenses and Free Speech: Constitutionality of Ban on Sex Offenders' Use of Social Media: Impact on States with Similar Restrictions". North Dakota Law Review. 93 (1): 129–142. Retrieved March 18, 2021.
External links
- Text of Packingham v. North Carolina, 582 U.S. ___ (2017) is available from: Cornell Findlaw Justia Oyez (oral argument audio) Supreme Court (slip opinion)
- Case file at SCOTUSblog