Hacker News Reader

> Normal people are protected from hate speech about their race or gender but cops are protected from "hate speech" about their race, gender, or profession

What? There are no such things as criminal hate speech or am I misunderstanding 1A?

View on HN

You're right I meant to say hate crimes not hate speech. Although in the Utah case her actions where pretty clearly speech [1]

[1] https://www.npr.org/2021/07/15/1016431004/a-woman-is-facing-...

This case is not going to result in a criminal indictment. It is clearly a 1A violation. Much like how Florida has recently been nabbing people from other states for online posts[1].

In both cases, it seems the justice system is being weaponized to punish those via a lengthy judicial process. Hopefully the defendants will sue for civil rights violations.

[1] https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/what-does-in-minec...

They hopefully won't but the threat of arrest, even if they won't be indicted, is definitely enough to have a dampening effect on people exercising their rights. At the same time I wouldn't be confident in the courts protecting your first amendment rights [1] especially given the current court.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schenck_v._United_States (Note: this case has been overturned, but it took 50 years)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com