SCOTUS Nominee Brett Kavanaugh Problematic Opinion On Anti-SLAPP Laws

SCOTUS Nominee Brett Kavanaugh Problematic Opinion On Anti-SLAPP Laws

7 years ago
Anonymous $TjsaxHwAP-

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20180711/17130440221/scotus-nominee-brett-kavanaugh-problematic-opinion-anti-slapp-laws.shtml

So Tim Cushing has just taken a peek at Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh's 4th Amendment rulings and Karl already looked at his questionable opinion concerning net neutrality (in which he argued (bizarrely) that what blocking content and services on a network is a 1st Amendment "editorial" decision by broadband providers). Of course, that's just one of his 1st Amendment cases. I wanted to look over some of Kavanaugh's other free speech related opinions. Ken "Popehat" White has done a pretty good job covering most of them, noting that for the most part, Kavanaugh takes a fairly strong First Amendment approach in the cases that come to him, and seems unlikely to upset the apple cart on First Amendment law in any significant way (if you want to see more of his opinions, this is a good place to start).

As Ken notes, there really isn't that much to comment on on most of those decisions, and Karl already wrote about the weird net neutrality one, but I did want to focus in on another First Amendment-adjacent case where I think Kavanaugh was incorrect: on the question of whether or not state anti-SLAPP laws apply in federal court. To be clear, by itself, this is really not a First Amendment question on its own, it's a question about what laws apply where. The case is Abbas v. Foreign Policy Group and Kavanaugh wrote the majority opinion which said that DC's anti-SLAPP law can not be used in federal court.