This article first appeared in the
April 7, 2014, issue of the National Law Journal’s Supreme Court Brief.
A man
convicted of making threats using Facebook has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to
resolve a circuit split over what constitutes a “true threat.”
Under the
pseudonym “Tone Dougie,” Anthony Douglas Elonis posted violent content on
Facebook about his wife and others, often in the form of rap lyrics.
Elonis was
convicted under 18 U.S.C. § 875(c), which makes it a federal crime to transmit
“any threat to injure the person of another” in interstate commerce. There are
comparable state laws.
The U.S.
Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit rejected Elonis’ appeal.
In February, the
University of Virginia School of Law’s Supreme Court Litigation Clinic filed a petition
for certiorari on behalf of Elonis. John Elwood, a Vinson & Elkins
partner and clinic instructor, is the counsel of record. Elwood is also a
former assistant to the solicitor general and clerk to Justice Anthony Kennedy.
The brief in
opposition is due April 21, so the justices could act soon on the petition.
Virginia v. Black, a 2003 Supreme Court opinion about
cross burning, held that when a “speaker means
to communicate a serious expression of an intent to commit an act of
unlawful violence to a particular individual or group of individuals,” that is
a true threat (emphasis added). Such threats are not protected speech under the First Amendment.
The petition outlines
a split among federal courts of appeals and state high courts over Black’s true threat definition. One
interpretation focuses on the speaker, while the other focuses on the speaker
and the listener.
Does the phrase “means to
communicate” require that the speaker subjectively intend a threat, or is it
enough that the message sent comes across objectively as a threat?
The petition
also notes that at least eight state high courts are in conflict with the
federal courts of appeals covering their regions. For instance, the First
Circuit utilizes an objective test, while Massachusetts and Rhode Island follow
a subjective one. State-federal conflicts are present in the Second and Ninth
Circuits, too, the petition reports.
The Third Circuit
applied the objective test, the majority view, to uphold Elonis’ Facebook
convictions.
In his
petition, Elonis argues for the subjective test, submitting that he was just using
Facebook therapeutically, as his marriage had broken up and he had lost his job.
The Facebook posts, the petition contends, “certainly involve no more violent
imagery than songs by any one of scores of popular rappers, including the
Eminem songs about the rapper’s ex-wife that inspired several of petitioner’s
posts.”
In his Facebook
posts, Elonis brought up the First Amendment, linking to a Wikipedia entry on
freedom of speech. In one post, he wrote, “Art is about pushing limits. I’m
willing to go to jail for my constitutional rights. Are you?”
The petition includes
a rudimentary description of Facebook, a subtle recognition of the justices’ admitted
lack of online savvy: Users have “a home page on which the user can post
comments, photos, and links to other websites.” They “may become ‘friends’ with
other users.”
Justice Elena
Kagan has said that the justices do not even use email.
