Thank you! Your submission has been received!
Oops! Something went wrong while submitting the form.
“After watching protests over abortion rights grow outside the homes of Supreme Court justices over the weekend, the Senate acted swiftly Monday to expand protection for the justices and their families. The Senate passed the Supreme Court Police Parity Act, a bipartisan bill granting additional security services to members of the court, by unanimous consent Monday evening…
“White House press secretary Jen Psaki released a statement Monday morning stating that Biden supports both peaceful protests and the need to keep Supreme Court justices safe. ‘(The president) strongly believes in the constitutional right to protest. But that should never include violence, threats or vandalism. Judges perform an incredibly important function in our society, and they must be able to do their jobs without concern for their personal safety,’ she said.” Deseret News
The right criticizes the protests outside the justices’ homes, arguing that they are attempts to intimidate the Court.
“These weren’t run-of-the-mill protests. No one doubts that demonstrations have an important role in showing popular support for, or passion around, a given cause. No, these protests were — and were meant to be — threatening. There’s no reason to go to the homes of the justices unless it is to send the message that people outraged by their prospective decision know where they and their families live. In other words, to the justice who dares say that Roe and Casey have no constitutional basis: Beware…
“Intimidation is always wrong in a democratic republic and nation of laws. It substitutes the threat of force for the democratic will as refined by our representative institutions and seeks to short-circuit reasoned deliberation… The threat here is larger than to the justices, appalling as it is. This kind of direct action invites retaliation. Do we really want to get into an escalating contest of who can better intimidate the other side’s judges and officeholders?”Rich Lowry, National Review
“Passionate protests always have the potential to turn violent, which is why it definitely matters where they happen. It is one thing to protest outside city hall, a police station, or the Supreme Court. It is an entirely different act to protest outside a mayor’s personal residence or a police officer's house. In 2020, unfortunately, many Black Lives Matter protesters crossed this line, demonstrating in residential neighborhoods, especially outside of mayors' homes, many of which were vandalized…
“This is why federal law prohibits picketing or parading in front of the home of a judge, juror, witness, or officer of the court under pain of up to one year in prison. Efforts to intimidate people within the legal system are an offense against judicial independence, a key prerequisite to democracy. If protesters want to demonstrate outside the Supreme Court, that is fine. But going into a judge’s neighborhood and marching in front of his or her home is too far. It is a dangerous act of intimidation that should be roundly criticized.”
Editorial Board, Washington Examiner
“Just as it is against the law to tamper with witnesses or jurors by intimidating them or their family, it’s unlawful to tamper with a Supreme Court justice by coming to their home to threaten, harass or coerce them to influence their vote in a case before the court…
“Asked last Friday about the group calling itself ‘Ruth Sent Us,’ which published the locations of the justices’ homes on its website, White House press secretary Jen Psaki refused to condemn the doxing. ‘We want people to protest peacefully if they want to,’ she said, adding that she didn’t have ‘an official U.S. government position on where people protest.’…
“There is in fact an ‘official U.S. government position on where people protest’ — it’s 18 U.S.C. 1507. After someone firebombed a pro-life group’s offices in Wisconsin on Sunday, Psaki belatedly tweeted that the Biden ‘strongly believes in the Constitutional right to protest. But that should never include violence, threats, or vandalism.’ It took someone throwing a Molotov cocktail at pro-lifers to elicit even that mild criticism. What will it take to get the president to order his attorney general to enforce federal law barring harassment of the justices and their families in their homes?”
Marc A. Thiessen, Washington Post
The left defends the right to protest peacefully, including outside the justices’ homes, but some caution that doing so may be unwise.
The left defends the right to protest peacefully, including outside the justices’ homes, but some caution that doing so may be unwise.
“‘The world is watching,’ dozens of protesters chanted in a chilly May rain on Sunday as they marched from [Justice] Kavanaugh’s house to [Justice] Roberts’ home and back again. One carried a sign that read: ‘If you stay silent in the face of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.’ They kept moving on the public roads and sidewalks, and no one was arrested, because no laws were being broken. In fact, it looked just like the freedom of assembly and airing of grievances that James Madison designed…
“[WH press secretary Jen Psaki issued] a statement from her boss that he supports a right to protest that should ‘never include violence, threats, or vandalism’ and then invokes the judges’ safety. This badly conflates two issues, since there’s been no violence, threats, or vandalism at or near the judges’ homes… The people marching peacefully on public streets airing their grievances outside the homes of Supreme Court justices have every constitutional right to do so.”Will Bunch, Philadelphia Inquirer
“In 2014, the court struck down a Massachusetts law that created 35-foot buffer zones around abortion clinics. The law was intended to reduce harassment of patients and to prevent shootings similar to those that occurred in 1994… Incidents of violence reached record highs in recent years, as people seeking abortions at clinics around the country have been verbally and sometimes even physically attacked by protesters. Yet, despite the 2014 ruling, an 8-foot fence has been erected around the Supreme Court building so justices don’t have to interact with protesters who object to their assault on abortion rights…
“The majority of the Supreme Court believes that pregnant, poor, desperate people who try to access reproductive health care should have to brave a [gauntlet] of abuse and potential violence. Supreme Court justices themselves can keep protesters from their workplace and are, according to powerful politicians and members of the commentariat, also supposed to be insulated from nonviolent protesters in their private lives. This despite the fact that, according to this Supreme Court, a right to privacy doesn’t actually exist.”
Noah Berlatsky, NBC News Think
Others argue that “The protests are part of a disturbing trend in which groups descend on the homes of people they disagree with and attempt to influence their public conduct by making their private lives — and, often, those of their families and neighbors — miserable. Those targeted in recent years include not just the conservative justices but also Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.); Mayor Ted Wheeler (D) of Portland, Ore.; and exiled Chinese dissident Teng Biao…
“To picket a judge’s home is especially problematic. It tries to bring direct public pressure to bear on a decision-making process that must be controlled, evidence-based and rational if there is to be any hope of an independent judiciary. Critics of reversing Roe maintain, defensibly, that to overturn such a long-standing precedent would itself violate core judicial principles. Yet if basic social consensus and the rule of law are to be sustained — and if protesters wish to maximize their own persuasiveness — demonstrations against even what many might regard as illegitimate rulings must respect the rights of others.”
Editorial Board, Washington Post
