ELAINE HARRIS SPEARMAN: Free speech has its limits, even on social media

Religion and politics provide the most fertile ground for disagreements, if you are looking for areas that find most people having heated discussions.

There are a great many faith denominations in this country. There are also a great many non-denominational worshippers occupying this same space.

All of this adds up to a free exercise of religion, which is contained within the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. The free exercise clause of the First Amendment guarantees you the right to practice your religious beliefs without government interference. However, the government need not always yield to religious beliefs when laws and religious tenets clash.

The First Amendment free exercise clause often butts heads with the freedom of speech, which is also guaranteed by the First Amendment. The right to freedom of speech is not absolute. The classic law school example for speech that is not protected is running into a crowded theater and falsely yelling “Fire!” Preventing the high potential for risk of injuries caused in the ensuing panic greatly outweighs the person’s right to that kind of speech.

Free speech does not mean that you can say anything that you want, at any time and place that you choose, to anybody. Every individual has the same right, and yours end where the next person’s begins.

Social media has created a climate for people to go beyond the pale in the pursuit of freedom of speech. The audiences are captive because they choose to be. Those who are not participating are exercising their right to not hear or read what a person has to say.

As some are discovering, social media does not protect certain kinds of speech.

Why would anybody in their right mind think that it is OK for a defendant involved in a trial before a judge to believe that it is within a right to free speech to engage in conduct on social media that places a judicial officer and his family at risk of harm?

Donald John Trump is engaging in the very behavior that the world saw in real time in the nation’s capital on Jan. 6, 2021. He appears to be encouraging violence toward a public servant. Why else would he name the presiding judge’s daughter, along with other information?

Public servants all over this country should be disparaging this conduct. Any other American citizen would have a takedown by federal marshals and/or Homeland Security. This is no exercise of free speech. It is encouraging people to go rogue, even those who may not be inclined to do so . This is what Trump does.

The smug-faced young man shown worldwide in his MAGA cap nose-to-nose with an elderly Native American in Washington, D.C., has been informed by the courts that he has nothing coming. Nicholas Sandmann claimed that he was defamed by media reports on his confrontation with a Native American rights activist at the Lincoln Memorial in January 2019.

Trump of course has defended Sandmann, as he told the attendees at the 2020 Republican National Convention that the media was trying to “cancel” him.

A federal judge in Kentucky dismissed his lawsuit in 2022. The activist's statement that “Sandmann blocked his retreat as reported by the news was the activist opinion and that the media could not be sued for reporting the statement.” The Cincinnati-based 6th U.S. Court of Appeals upheld the judge’s dismissal. The Supreme Court has declined to hear the Trump acolyte’s appeal.

The judicial system is choking with lawsuits of every kind, which is the strategy that Trump has bragged about using all of his life.

As the MAGA acolytes wrap themselves in the flag and the tag of “Christian conservative,” there was no reference to Trump labeling himself as such.

Michael Cohen, the former personal attorney and acknowledged Trump “fixer,” said, “Begin with the premise that Donald Trump hadn’t darkened the door of a church or chapel since the age of seven.” Places of religious worship had absolutely no interest to him and he possessed precisely zero personal piety in his life. But he knew the power of religion in a rhetorical question about how the “amoral” Trump came to be beloved by evangelical voters.

He is, of course, reportedly now hawking a Bible in addition to falsely calling out the Catholic faithful to go against President Joe Biden because the Trans Day of Visibility fell on Easter Sunday. This named day has always been on March 31, since being recognized in 2009. Easter has not.

Desperate people do desperate things.

Elaine Harris Spearman, Esq., a Gadsden native, is an attorney and is the retired legal advisor to the comptroller of the City of St. Louis. The views expressed are her own. 

This article originally appeared on The Gadsden Times: ELAINE HARRIS SPEARMAN: Trump's social media use should draw criticism