<story><title>State law: You can&apos;t say bad things about a business</title><url>http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/01/opinion/no-more-exposes-in-north-carolina.html?_r=0</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>Someone1234</author><text>I definitely agree that this law violates the First Amendment and therefore suspect if a case came to the SCOTUS they would rule against it (assuming it even needed to get that high).&lt;p&gt;But my question is this: From my understanding, the First Amendment establishes limits on what government can and cannot do, it doesn&amp;#x27;t establish what a private entity can and cannot do. In this case the law allows a private business to sue a private individual, and while the law itself is established by government, the use of that law is not.&lt;p&gt;So maybe someone with more legal expertise than myself can answer: Is it possible to bring this issue before SCOTUS if it is only used by non-government? Have they effectively found a loophole by keeping government out of the actual lawsuits? Can you sue a law itself (would you have standing)?</text></item><item><author>otterley</author><text>I imagine these laws eventually will be overturned by the Supreme Court as contrary to the First Amendment.  It involves punishment of core political speech, so it should be a relatively open-and-shut case.&lt;p&gt;The strongest argument in favor of the Constitutionality of these laws is that they are outlawing speech that could not have been made but for the violation of another law (i.e. common trespass and&amp;#x2F;or contract breach), but I&amp;#x27;d be very surprised if the laws survived on those grounds.  Newsgathering is often performed by trespassing, even newsgathering that&amp;#x27;s been previously upheld by the Court (e.g. Pentagon Papers, in which the author had unlawful access to classified materials).</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>matthewmcg</author><text>The First Amendment is still implicated even in private disputes when one party requests that a court take some action that restricts the speech of the other party. The court can&amp;#x27;t take the requested action (e.g. an injunction stopping publication) if it violates the first amendment.&lt;p&gt;This is a bit of a simplification but the name in legal circles for the concept you are talking about is the &amp;quot;state action&amp;quot; requirement.</text></comment>
<story><title>State law: You can&apos;t say bad things about a business</title><url>http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/01/opinion/no-more-exposes-in-north-carolina.html?_r=0</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>Someone1234</author><text>I definitely agree that this law violates the First Amendment and therefore suspect if a case came to the SCOTUS they would rule against it (assuming it even needed to get that high).&lt;p&gt;But my question is this: From my understanding, the First Amendment establishes limits on what government can and cannot do, it doesn&amp;#x27;t establish what a private entity can and cannot do. In this case the law allows a private business to sue a private individual, and while the law itself is established by government, the use of that law is not.&lt;p&gt;So maybe someone with more legal expertise than myself can answer: Is it possible to bring this issue before SCOTUS if it is only used by non-government? Have they effectively found a loophole by keeping government out of the actual lawsuits? Can you sue a law itself (would you have standing)?</text></item><item><author>otterley</author><text>I imagine these laws eventually will be overturned by the Supreme Court as contrary to the First Amendment.  It involves punishment of core political speech, so it should be a relatively open-and-shut case.&lt;p&gt;The strongest argument in favor of the Constitutionality of these laws is that they are outlawing speech that could not have been made but for the violation of another law (i.e. common trespass and&amp;#x2F;or contract breach), but I&amp;#x27;d be very surprised if the laws survived on those grounds.  Newsgathering is often performed by trespassing, even newsgathering that&amp;#x27;s been previously upheld by the Court (e.g. Pentagon Papers, in which the author had unlawful access to classified materials).</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>cmurf</author><text>It&amp;#x27;s the worst example of government where businesses have more of a voice than people, and use their political influence to compel the government to basically act like a gang or the mafia to shut up dissenters.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s really a tiny handful of jerks who say, &amp;quot;yes, it&amp;#x27;s a good thing that we bash little baby pigs heads in, by grabbing them by the hind legs, and throwing them head first into the ground, when we determine they are non-viable. But we desperately don&amp;#x27;t want the public to know that&amp;#x27;s how we get rid of non-viable pigs, because we know the public actually has something of a moral conscience, unlike us, and would stop eating our pigs if they knew this is how it worked. And that&amp;#x27;s just the beginning.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;So the question is whether it&amp;#x27;s the private business that&amp;#x27;s abridging speech, or if it&amp;#x27;s the government. If this an extension of defamation law, then it&amp;#x27;s the former. If it&amp;#x27;s asking the government to do their own dirty work, then it&amp;#x27;s the latter. And I think it&amp;#x27;s the latter.</text></comment>