The Electronic Frontier Foundation, an international non-profit that promotes digital rights, has filed an Amicus Brief in Packingham v. North Carolina.
What does this mean?
In 2002, a 21 year old by the name of Lester Packingham committed an offense that put him on the sex offender registry. Long after, the State of North Carolina (where he lives) passed a law punishing registrants for “accessing” social media or online sites that can be accessed by children.
This ban on “accessing” social media and online content, according to Mr. Packingham (and us) is a violation of his First Amendment right. To put it in more technical terms, the issue is “Whether, under the court’s First Amendment precedents, a law that makes it a felony for any person on the state’s registry of former sex offenders to “access” a wide array of websites – including Facebook, YouTube, and nytimes.com – that enable communication, expression, and the exchange of information among their users, if the site is “know[n]” to allow minors to have accounts, is permissible, both on its face and as applied to petitioner, who was convicted based on a Facebook post in which he celebrated dismissal of a traffic ticket, declaring “God is Good!”
Lester Packingham took his fight all the way to the US Supreme Court, who agreed to hear his case!!!
This is significant to all registrants in the US, because the Supreme Court of the United States is the highest court in this land and a decision there will impact the First Amendment rights of all registrants in the US! It will impact their ability to access the internet, communicate, express themselves and even work in most industries!
Those who are not parties to a lawsuit but who have an interest in the outcome or a perspective they think would be important to share with the Court, can file briefs in the case. These are called Amicus Briefs, (“friend of the court” briefs). The EFF spoke out on behalf of the First Amendment by filing such a brief in this case. A copy can be read here.
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