Author: Mike Masnick
from the alice-in-wonderland-times dept Generally speaking, if a judge says this to you, your client is unlikely to succeed in their case: “This may be amusing in ‘Alice in Wonderland’ where the Queen of Hearts yells ‘Off with their heads!’ at annoying subjects… but this cannot be the reality we are living under.” That was Judge Beryl Howell yesterday, as she swiftly blocked President Trump’s executive order targeting law firm Perkins Coie. The judge’s literary reference captured perfectly why this unprecedented attempt to destroy a law firm for representing political opponents represents such a dangerous assault on constitutional principles. Just…
from the was-he-the-dungeon-master? dept When Florida’s lawyers tried to defend the state’s social media age restriction law by claiming it’s “well known” that platforms harm children, they probably weren’t expecting to get schooled on moral panics by a judge citing his own experiences with… Dungeons & Dragons. But that’s exactly what happened in a recent hearing challenging Florida’s unconstitutional law barring teenagers from social media — and it perfectly illustrated why we should be deeply skeptical of laws based on unproven claims of harm to children. Florida’s law, HB 3, is part of a broader wave of state legislation trying…