Conservative Republicans started prioritizing a high court takeover, with the explicit aim of ending legal abortion, more than 40 years ago. Democrats and progressives stuck their heads in the sand. Women, denied autonomy over their own bodies, are poised to pay the biggest price.
Privacy
Supreme Court Will Eviscerate Roe v. Wade But Signals Split on What Comes Next
The Supreme Court justices signaled a major shift on abortion law in arguments on a Missouri case today but the six conservative justices who hold the majority in the highest court seemed divided: Would they overturn the core right to abortion entirely or would they allow abortion to be limited by the states to the early stages of pregnancy?
The Personhood Argument Gestating Over Abortion
On Dec. 1, 2021, the court will hear a case many believe will force the conservative justices — who now command a majority of the court — to decide if they will strike down Roe v. Wade or uphold the long-standing precedent. But a third path could focus a ruling on a more neglected aspect of the ruling in Roe — the court’s understanding of the facts of fetal personhood.
Online Anonymity: ‘Stable Pseudonyms’ Create a More Civil Environment than Real User Names
Research suggests that anonymity – under certain conditions – can actually make for more civil and productive online discussion. This surprising result came out of a study looking at the deliberative quality of comments on online news articles under a range of different identity rules.
School Surveillance of Students Through Laptops May Be Doing More Harm Than Good
Student surveillance is taking place – at taxpayer expense – in cities and school communities throughout the United States. In one large district, three-quarters of incidents reported – that is, cases where the system flagged students’ online activity – took place outside school hours.
How Facebook’s ‘Dangerous’ Algorithms Can Manipulate You
Social media platforms rely heavily on people’s behavior to decide on the content that you see. In particular, they watch for content that people respond to or “engage” with by liking, commenting and sharing. Troll farms, organizations that spread provocative content, exploit this by copying high-engagement content and posting it as their own, which helps them reach a wide audience.
Texas Rebirths Jim Crow Tactics in Vigilantism-Enabling Abortion Law
The new Texas law that bans most abortions uses a method employed by Texas and other states to enforce racist Jim Crow laws in the 19th and 20th centuries that aimed to disenfranchise African Americans.
You May No Longer Legally Lodge Anonymous Code Enforcement Complaints, But Mandate Is Easily Evaded
The new law does not address enforcement of the identification provision, it does not set out any requirements for verification, it does not signal any penalties for people who invent names, and it imposes no requirements either on local governments in general or on code enforcement officers to do more than note whether a complainant has been identified or not.
Appeals Court Overturns Alachua County’s Mask Mandate, Citing Right to Privacy
Pointing to privacy rights, a divided state appeals court Friday overturned a circuit judge’s decision last year that allowed Alachua County to keep in place a mask requirement to try to prevent the spread of Covid-19.
Here’s Palm Coast’s Full ‘Difficult Citizens’ List, Its Origins, and the Kind of Offenses that Landed People On It
The full and controversial “Difficult Citizen List” Palm Coast government has kept since 2016 is revealed, along with its history: the city set up a task force on employee safety in 2015, resulting in guidelines for employees on how to deal with difficult customers. The list, kept largely secret, was one of the results. The city council is rethinking its approach.