On Monday June 19, the Supreme Court issued two significant First Amendment decisions. Most of the press attention went to Matal v. Tam aka “The Slants'” case. But the far more significant case for my little neck of the woods was Packingham v. North Carolina. Because Packingham focused on criminal law, and did not have anything to do with the Washington Redskins keeping or changing their name, it garnered relatively little attention. But Packingham has much more importance for the future of the First Amendment online by recognizing the primary First Amendment right of subscribers to access broadband platforms and content. Indeed, Justice Kennedy’s paean to the Internet as the modern public square echoes themes from the more “Madisonian” view of the First Amendment expounded by scholars such as Cass Sunstein (and prompted alarm from Alito, Roberts and Thomas in concurrence).
This has significant implications for all the crap the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA) has done to make it easy to kick users offline (and the whole future of “graduated response”/”3 strikes”) and the existing and fairly abusive notice and takedown regime (and efforts to extend it further). It may also have significant implications for the First Amendment argument over broadband, net neutrality and the future of regulation of online platforms such as Facebook, but I will save that for Part II.
I unpack all this below . . .