washington
CNN
—
The Supreme Court on Monday declined to hear several First Amendment appeals, including a case dealing with a requirement for gun dealers in Maryland to display suicide prevention documents and a case involving a man arrested at a roadblock. dismissed another lawsuit involving anti-Confederate war memorial protesters.
The gun dispute involved a county ordinance in Maryland that requires all firearms or ammunition stores to display literature “related to gun safety, gun training, suicide prevention, mental health, and conflict resolution.”
Anne Arundel County, a Baltimore suburb, enacted an ordinance in 2022 aimed at reducing gun violence after local officials declared suicide a public health crisis. Initial violations of the ordinance resulted in large civil fines.
The Supreme Court declined to hear the series of cases Monday without comment. There were no notable objections.
Gun rights groups in the state objected to the requirement, saying they were being illegally forced to speak, but disagreed in part. However, a lower court upheld the ordinance, saying it was a permissible regulation of commerce.
“We conclude that this pamphlet, taken together, addresses suicide as a public health and safety concern and advises gun owners how they can assist,” the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals wrote in January. the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals said in a unanimous decision in January. “This pamphlet is more consistent with other similar widely applied and accepted safety warnings that gun owners must store their firearms safely, especially to prevent misuse and child access. ”
The justices also refused to hear a lawsuit from three people who protested a Confederate statue in Gainesville, Texas, and who wanted to argue that their arrests violated the Constitution.
Amara Ridge, Torrey Henderson, and Justin Thompson were arrested in 2020 after participating in a nonviolent march. According to police, the three were arrested and sentenced for obstructing a public highway. The state claims protesters “repeatedly ignored” instructions to stay on the sidewalks.
Protesters, led by the American Civil Liberties Union, claim that at one point they only went off the sidewalk for a moment due to a “water hazard” and then returned to the courthouse lawn at the end of the march. They claim the arrest violated the First and 14th Amendments.
The case was appealed to a Texas court, which sided with the state.
The court also declined to rule on the politically charged issue of campaign finance regulation Monday, sidestepping a challenge to a San Francisco law requiring expanded disclosure of political donors in campaign ads.
The law, approved by voters in a 2019 ballot initiative, requires some political ads to identify secondary donors, such as top donors to political committees.
This requirement is intended to ensure that people viewing political ads know who is actually funding the ads. But critics say the requirement is too onerous and makes political advertising impossible because of the amount of information that must be displayed.
The city’s political committee and several other committees filed suit to block the law, but a lower court ruled them invalid. The petitioners asked the high court to determine whether the requirement amounted to “an intrusion into political campaign speech, which is central to the First Amendment.”
