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From: "Adam H. Kerman" <ahk@chinet.com>
Newsgroups: rec.arts.tv
Subject: Re: PING Britain and Canadia: This is How You Do Free Speech
Date: Wed, 15 Jan 2025 21:29:02 -0000 (UTC)
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BTR1701 <atropos@mac.com> wrote:

>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=83L6vZx6OuA

Sep 25, 2021

Earlier video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N39OMhmK7EM

Apr 19, 2020

>A teen girl in Wisconsin posted a pic on Instagram from a hospital in 2020 in
>the midst of the Wuhan Flu hysteria, with the caption, "Winning the fight with
>COVID-19."

>The sheriff's department showed up at her home and threatened to arrest her
>and charge her with disorderly conduct if she didn't remove the post saying
>she had the virus.

From the earlier video, the girl and her parents were all threatened
with arrest for disorderly conduct.

Huh. The patrol sergeant who made the threats was sued in his personal
capacity. I didn't know that was a thing.

>(It's unclear from the reporting why in the hell the cops cared whether she
>had the virus or not or if she was telling the world via Instagram that she
>had it.)

It's explained in the earlier video. She had travelled to Disney World
with her bandmates, right before both Florida and Wisconsin governors
declared public health emergencies, amd had to come home early. She
thought she had symptoms -- and doctors agreed -- but testing was lousy
and she was never tested during the window in which she'd have showed
positive. Nevertheless, she was diagnosed based on symptoms.

Her mother informed the band leader to tell the other parents by leaving
a message on voicemail. Weeks later, the principal spoke to the mother.
Again she informed the principal. There was no followup. It was the
school superintendant who complained to the sheriff who, instead of
telling the superintendant NOT to harass the student because HE was
derilict in his duty to notify parents of the other children who were
expowe, sent the patrol sergeant to her door.

In the first video, Lehto was pissed that the attorney had lied to
reporters claiming no one was threatened with arrest even though the
police sergeant wrote that he had threatened to make arrests in his very
own police report.

The sheriff wanted the posts removed as there were no confirmed cases in
the county at the time. Wow. Another coverup.

Remind me again why public officials' embarassment over something or
other trumps the liberty to speak freely and publish, particularly when
the speaker/publisher is telling the truth?

The father offered to show the police sergeant the doctor's findings and
medical order but the sergeant stated that he wasn't there to
investigate, merely to carry out his sheriff's instructions.

The father let the girl make the decision to take the offending post
down herself. She took it down as her father had been threatened with
arrest.

Subsequently a different school administrator sent out a mass message
calling her disease "a rumor" and stating there's no truth that anyone
had been exposed to COVID whilst on the trip. Way to expose the school
district to liability... 

>The U.S. District Court ruled in summary judgment (i.e., the facts stipulated
>to by both parties so clearly showed a violation of the 1st Amendment by the
>government that a trial was unnecessary) that the government committed a
>bright line violation of the girl's right to free speech.

>The judge wrote in his order, "The 1st Amendment is not a game setting for the
>government to toggle off and on. It applies in times of tranquility and times
>of strife." Guaranteed rights cannot be dispatched by the government under the
>guise of emergency, and furthermore, law enforcement has no business trying to
>regulate the social media posts of local teenagers.

Nice quote

>(This would be surprising news to FPP, who at the time was vociferously
>arguing here on RAT that since the pandemic was an 'emergency', the government
>could suspend whatever parts of the Constitution it liked.)

>So while the UK and Canadia are busy sending cops to people's homes to arrest
>them for online posts with the government's endorsement and enthusiastic
>participation, here in America, the cops get yanked back by their leash when
>they try and do that fascist shit.

I'm appalled that this was taken to court. Couldn't the sheriff have
just... apologized? What a huge waste of the taxpayers' money. Did the
plaintiff at least get lawyers fees?