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Screen shows: U.S. Supreme Court preview briefing 2008-2009 term
(video 4 of 4)
Good morning, everyone. I want to welcome you to the ACLU's Annual Supreme Court breakfast.
Steve Shapiro, our legal director, will give a little bit of an assessment of where the
court has come so far and what we expect in the coming term. And, now, I'll hand the program
over to Steve.
Screen shows: Every year the ACLU briefs the press corps on the state of the Supreme Court.
Screen shows: Video 4: First Amendment cases on the docket
Screen shows: Pleasant Grove City, Utah v. Summum
Steven R. Shapiro ACLU Legal Director: One is a case that may
attract some attention is the city of Pleasant Grove; Utah vs. Summum. Summum is a religion.
The case arose because the city officials in Pleasant Grove accepted the donation of
a Ten Commandments monument. After they placed the Ten Commandments monument in the city
park, the adherence of the Summum religion donated to the city, their own monument, similarly
sized which contained the Seven Affirisms of the Summum faith. City fathers declined
to accept that donation, and the Summum plaintiffs are now before the Supreme Court arguing as
a free speech matter, not as a religion matter, that to accept the Ten Commandments monument
and then to deny their donation of their own monument is a form of viewpoint discrimination
that violates the free speech clause of the 1st amendment. So, we'll see what the court
has to say about equal access and religious speech under the 1st amendment in the Summum
case.
Screen shows: FCC v. Fox Television
SS: The other case is a case called the FCC v. Fox Television. This has to do with a challenge
to the so called fleeting expletive rule adopted by the FCC following the famous Janet Jackson
wardrobe malfunction to mark the dramatic change in the FCC's past policy and practice,
that it never before regarded so called fleeting expletives as a violation of the indecency
rules that govern the airwaves. Its changed its mind after the Super Bowl and the 2nd
Circuit said that the change, itself, was unlawful because they had not adequately justified
it as they were required to do as a matter of administrative law. The ACLU submitted
a brief and the meekest brief to the Supreme Court in which we agreed with that conclusion;
but, we also said that the case had a more fundamental issue, and the more fundamental
issue had to do with the constitutionality of the indecency rule at all. We pointed out
two things in our brief, both of which, I think ought to be significant to the Supreme
Court: one is the arbitrariness with which the FCC has enforced that rule over the years,
and the second is the sort of oddity in the modern world now of subjecting broadcasts
on television to an indecency regime that do not apply, for example, for the precise
same shows that are broadcast on the internet because the internet is beyond FCC regulation,
as indeed, is cable television. Beyond that, the Supreme Court in recent years has expressed
it's own discomfort mostly in the internet context with the vagueness of the indecency
rules and the broad sensorial powers that they give to government officials, so we will
see how far the Supreme Court is willing to go with the FCC and what they have to say
about it.
Video Menu: 1. Understanding the Justices
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