WASHINGTON - April 11, 2020 - A court has held that a SUNY student was free to go on Twitter, and to appear at a public protest event, falsely claiming that she was the victim of a racially motivated criminal assault during which she was called a "n*gg*r," for the apparent purpose of creating racial unrest at her school, despite a criminal statute designed to prevent just such public reporting of fabricated crimes.
Although the ruling is likely to encourage other students to likewise seek to stir up public unrest and even violence by falsely reporting hate crimes, such speech is protected by the First Amendment to the Constitution, the court ruled.
Interestingly, this same legal theory could be used to protect college students from any campus discipline for falsely making claims of racial, ethic, misogynistic, or homophobic motivated incidents at state universities, notes public interest law professor John Banzhaf, an ardent defender of First Amendment rights of college students.
The defendant, an African American female, claimed, in the words of the court, "that 'she was 'jumped' on a bus by a group of males, that it was a racial crime, and that she was struck by boys and called a 'n*gg*r.'" [NOTE: The opinion used the n-word without alteration].
Despite finding that "it was 'not unlikely' that defendant's false tweets about a racial assault at a state university would cause public alarm," the court nevertheless reversed her conviction under this statute because "criminalizing false speech requires either proof of specific harm to identifiable victims or a great likelihood of harm."
Although it acknowledged that the defendant's tweet triggered a "Twitter storm," it opined that "[t]he remedy for speech that is false is speech that is true," since, "by the very nature of social media, falsehoods can quickly and effectively be countered by truth."
Obviously, many who have witnessed how false reports of racial incidents can lead to unrest and even violent protests may doubt the court's assurance that social media can quickly and effectively counter such fabrications by simply proclaiming the truth.
http://banzhaf.net/ jbanzhaf3ATgmail.com @profbanzhaf
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