One of the signs you’ve begun thinking like a lawyer is when you happen upon a news story and reflexively think “That’s a lawsuit waiting to happen.” Case in point — Larry Bushart getting arrested and charged over a Trump meme. Thankfully, the long wait is over:
This should be an open and shut case in his favor. The lawsuit will (hopefully) memorialize a strange moment in America’s history where a man’s public murder was used as part of a larger campaign to whip up a frenzy and inspire more calls to violence against minorities until it was discovered that the alleged shooter was “demographically uncooperative.” The weeks following Charlie Kirk’s murder sent everyone into a sentiment censorship frenzy where even paraphrasing his words could cost you your job. The zeitgeist was so heavy with thought policing and obeying in advance that even the vice president started jawboning private employers to discipline their employees over offending speech. Maybe that’s why the people who reported Bushart and the police who then arrested him didn’t feel too much pause over the deeply un-American actions at play. Fear can get in the way of commitments to liberty — a few jumps in reasoning lead people to think that Bushart’s post was actually a call for more gun violence; another point that has no way of holding up in court.
The stakes of this case loom large for Americans as a whole: FIRE lead attorney Adam Steinbaugh who had this to say:
“If police can come to your door in the middle of the night and put you behind bars based on nothing more than an entirely false and contrived interpretation of a Facebook post, no one’s First Amendment rights are safe[.]”
If Bushart wins, there’s gonna be a hell of a lot of “I told you so-ing.” If he loses, the chilling effects will be so strong that we probably won’t be telling each other anything at all.
Chris Williams became a social media manager and assistant editor for Above the Law in June 2021. Prior to joining the staff, he moonlighted as a minor Memelord™ in the Facebook group Law School Memes for Edgy T14s . He endured Missouri long enough to graduate from Washington University in St. Louis School of Law. He is a former boatbuilder who is learning to swim, is interested in critical race theory, philosophy, and humor, and has a love for cycling that occasionally annoys his peers. You can reach him by email at cwilliams@abovethelaw.com and by tweet at @WritesForRent.
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