Author: Mary Anne Franks

Dr. Mary Anne Franks is the Eugene L. and Barbara A. Bernard professor in intellectual property, technology and civil rights law at George Washington Law School and the president and legislative and tech policy director of the nonprofit organization Cyber Civil Rights Initiative. Her areas of expertise include First and Second Amendment law, criminal law, family law, and the intersection of civil rights and technology. She is the author of the award-winning book, The Cult of the Constitution: Our Deadly Devotion to Guns and Free Speech (Stanford Press, 2019). Her second book, Fearless Speech (Bold Type Books) is expected in 2024.

The Witch Hunts of the 1600s Never Really Ended

An excerpt from Mary Anne Franks’ new book, Fearless Speech: Breaking Free From the First Amendment:

“Amber Heard was professionally blacklisted, constantly surveilled by the press and the public, and subjected to death threats and harassment. All of this happened because Heard wrote something that people did not like—the kind of speech that, according to American free speech orthodoxy, should be most robustly protected by the First Amendment. But in a decision that chilled the speech of sexual abuse and domestic violence victims everywhere, Heard was found liable for defamation and ordered to pay Depp $15 million. … As the Heard case revealed in excruciating detail, when it comes to women’s speech, the protection of the First Amendment is little more than hollow rhetoric.”

In U.S. v. Rahimi, Domestic Violence Victims Live to Die Another Day

Friday morning, the Supreme Court ruled 8-1 that a law restricting firearms access for a narrow class of individuals subject to a specific kind of domestic violence restraining order does not violate the Second Amendment. The ruling is a “win” in much the same way the Court’s ruling in the mifepristone case FDA v. Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine earlier this month is a win: The Court did the “bare minimum” necessary to cling to the last vestiges of its legitimacy.

The threat posed by violent abusers like Zackey Rahimi might be temporarily disarmed today, but the threat posed by the Supreme Court’s patriarchal agenda remains a loaded weapon.

Idaho’s EMTALA Challenge Has Got Women Dead to Rights

On April 24, the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in Moyle v. U.S., a case that will determine whether individual states are allowed to exclude a single group from this basic protection: pregnant women.

The state of Idaho claims that it has the right to forbid pregnant women and girls—and only pregnant women and girls—from receiving emergency care that could save their lives.

The Abortion Pill and the Hypocritical Oath

The lead plaintiff in the mifepristone case heard before the Supreme Court this week is a shadowy organization calling itself the Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine (AHM). The group’s name is clearly intended to evoke the Hippocratic oath, popularly understood as the commitment of doctors to “first do no harm.”

To claim, as the Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine does, that forcing a woman or child to give birth against her will, even if childbirth will seriously injure or even kill her, honors the principle of “do no harm” is perverse, but also very revealing. It makes clear that the “harm” that AHM and other anti-abortion ideologues care about is wholly imaginary.

The Constitution as a Homicide Pact

The facts of U.S. v. Rahimi reveal the gendered and destructive reality of gun use behind the illusion of abstract, idealized self-defense.

Every 14 hours in the U.S., a man uses a gun to kill his intimate partner. Pregnant women are particularly vulnerable. But the Supreme Court’s conservative commitment to “life” is highly selective, to put it mildly, and tends to value women’s lives—including those of domestic violence victims—very little. We can expect the Court’s ruling to come down in June or July of 2024.