Brown v. Entertainment Merchants Assn., 08-1448
California passed a law regulating the sale and rental of violent video games to minors. The 9th Circuit declined to use the standard applied to laws restricting sexual obscenity, and instead struck down the law after a strict scrutiny examination. Writing for a diverse majority, Justice Scalia reasoned that since the Framers did not contemplate a 1st Amendment exception for distributing violent content to children, strict scrutiny should apply and the circuit court’s judgment should be affirmed. Justice Thomas–not willing to be out-originalisted by the majority–wrote a dissenting opinion arguing that the Founding Fathers did not think that children had any rights at all, so today we cannot interpret the 1st Amendment to extend free speech rights to children. He backed it up with contemporary writings related to parenting and childhood, including excerpts of letters from Thomas Jefferson to his children. (J. Alito filed a concurring opinion, joined by C.J. Roberts; J. Breyer filed a dissent.) The Atlanta Journal-Constitution interviewed a professor of child psychology who noted that the entire body of research on the effects of violence on children is not very conclusive. Slate (in a piece it titled “Bush v. Gore”) contrasted the different ways sexual and violent media are addressed in our cultural debates.
AZ Free Enterprise Club’s Freedom Club PAC v. Bennett, 10-238; McComish v. Bennett, 10-239
Arizona law provides a public finance option in state campaigns; a candidate can opt into the program, forego all private financing, and if the candidate’s opponent reaches a certain funding threshold, receive matching campaign funds from the state. The Petitioners–candidates who did or plan to opt out in races against opt-in candidates, and political action committees that fund opt-out candidates–argued that the public finance scheme creates a government-funded disincentive to spend, and therefore, to speak, and that the law treats them differently because of their choice of expression. The Court (C.J. Roberts wrote for the majority; J. Kagan filed a dissenting opinion, joined by J. Ginsburg, J. Breyer, and J. Sotomayor) found that Arizona’s public financing scheme unreasonably burdens the political speech of opt-out candidates, and struck the matching-funds element of the law. The Washington Post published dueling op-eds from George Will and its editorial board. The Wall Street Journal noted Justice Kagan’s strong dissent, and examined the newest justice’s invigorating effect on the liberal wing of the Court.
J. McIntyre Machinery v. Nicastro, 09-1343
A British company sold a scrap metal processing machine to an independent Ohio company–its sole U.S. distributor–that then sold the machine to a New Jersey company, where a worker was injured. The New Jersey Supreme Court found that the state court had personal jurisdiction over the foreign manufacturer under the stream-of-commerce theory, concluding that when the company introduced its product into a distribution system that might have flowed to any of the states, it should have anticipated becoming subject to the jurisdiction of any state where their product ended up. Four justices (J. Kennedy wrote the opinion, joined by C.J. Roberts, J. Scalia, and J. Thomas) urged a revision of the stream-of-commerce doctrine, and held that the Petitioner was not subject to personal jurisdiction in New Jersey because it did not engage “in conduct purposefully directed at New Jersey.” Two justices (J. Breyer wrote the opinion, joined by J. Alito) found for the Petitioners under the current state of the law, and rejected the idea of overhauling modern personal jurisdiction practice. (J. Ginsburg filed a dissenting opinion, joined by J. Sotomayor and J. Kagan.) As described in Civil Procedure and Federal Courts Blog, this split majority leaves the stream-of-commerce doctrine in limbo. The New Jersey Star-Ledger offered details about the injured worker at the heart of this case.
Goodyear v. Brown, 10-76
In the other personal jurisdiction case handed down on Monday, the Court (J. Ginsburg wrote the unanimous opinion) considered a North Carolina case where two residents were killed in a bus crash in France, on tires manufactured and sold by foreign subsidiaries of a corporation present in North Carolina. This case examines the differences between specific jurisdiction–where a party’s particular act within a state leads to the injury, and thus, to personal jurisdiction–and general jurisdiction–where a party has regular and continuous operations within a state, and might therefore be subject to personal jurisdiction even for claims arising out of acts that are not within the state. The Court held that the state court impermissibly elided the standards for these distinct theories of jurisdiction, and reversed. The ABA Journal contrasted Justice Ginsburg’s majority opinion in Goodyear with her disapproving dissent in Nicastro (delivered orally from the bench). Daniel Fisher in Forbes examined the meaning of both of these personal jurisdiction cases in the context of a changing international market place.