April, 01 2021, 12:00am EDT
Unlikely Allies From Across the Political Spectrum Urge Supreme Court to Uphold Students' Free Speech Rights
More than 100 organizations, more than 250 individuals, and nine Republican state attorneys general filed briefs yesterday urging the Supreme Court to protect young people's First Amendment's rights in the most important student free speech case in decades. The briefs were filed by some of the most conservative and liberal organizations in the country, and included student activists, school administrators, conservative public interest and religious rights organizations, civil rights groups, a national teachers' union, law and education professors, and social scientists.
WASHINGTON
More than 100 organizations, more than 250 individuals, and nine Republican state attorneys general filed briefs yesterday urging the Supreme Court to protect young people's First Amendment's rights in the most important student free speech case in decades. The briefs were filed by some of the most conservative and liberal organizations in the country, and included student activists, school administrators, conservative public interest and religious rights organizations, civil rights groups, a national teachers' union, law and education professors, and social scientists.
The briefs were filed in Mahanoy Area School District v. B.L.,in which a school suspended B.L., a high school freshman, from her cheerleading team for posting a message saying "Fuck school fuck cheer fuck softball fuck everything" on her personal Snapchat while out of school on the weekend. The ACLU and the ACLU of Pennsylvania represent B.L. The case asks what free speech rights public school students should have outside school, and the Supreme Court's decision will define the scope of young people's free speech rights 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.
The groups, individuals, and states filed 24 separate friend-of-the-court (amicus) briefs in support of the ACLU's argument that the Supreme Court should not give school officials the same authority they have in school to censor students' speech outside of school contexts, because this would be a dangerous restriction on young people's free speech rights.
"Empowering public school officials to censor what students say when they are outside of school would be an epic restriction of young people's freedom of expression," said Witold Walczak, legal director of the ACLU of Pennsylvania. "It would impact not only harmless outbursts like B.L.'s, but would threaten young people's right to speak about important political, religious, and cultural matters, which is exactly the wrong lesson to teach young people."
The diverse individuals and groups who filed 24 briefs in support of the ACLU's client B.L. include:
- Mary Beth and John Tinker, who won the landmark 1969 "black armband" case, Tinker v. Des Moines, which established that "students do not shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate."
- Nine Republican-led states -- Louisiana, Arkansas, Kentucky, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Texas, and Utah.
- Student activists groups, including Houston Independent School District Student Congress, Kentucky Student Voice Team, March For Our Lives Action Fund, Students For a Sensible Drug Policy, and Student Voice.
- Parents Defending Education, a conservative parents' rights organization.
- National Women's Law Center, the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights, Lambda Legal Defense Fund, and more than 30 other civil rights groups.
- The Liberty Justice Center and the Firearms Policy Coalition.
- Former teachers, school administrators, and the National Council of Teachers of English.
- The Student Press Law Center and other journalism education organizations.
- The Juvenile Law Center, Advancement Project, and other juvenile justice organizations.
- The National College Players Association and the College Athlete Advocacy Initiative.
- Alliance Defending Freedom, Christian Legal Society, First Liberty Institute, and the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty.
- The Electronic Frontier Foundation and Foundation for Individual Rights in Education.
- Cato Institute, Pacific Legal Foundation, Americans for Prosperity Foundation, and Rutherford Institute.
"You won't find another case in the past decade with such a diverse range of groups on the same side," said David Cole, ACLU national legal director. "We have support from the right to the left, from students to administrators, from civil rights groups, religious liberty organizations, and red states. That's because young people's freedom of speech isn't a conservative issue, a liberal issue, a Democratic issue, or a Republican issue. It's an American issue that affects all of us."
The American Civil Liberties Union was founded in 1920 and is our nation's guardian of liberty. The ACLU works in the courts, legislatures and communities to defend and preserve the individual rights and liberties guaranteed to all people in this country by the Constitution and laws of the United States.
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"As CMS negotiates the prices Medicare will pay for top-selling drugs, it should take into account the billions we've already lost due to these patenting tactics," said one researcher.
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When the Inflation Reduction Act became law in 2022, it included a historic provision that gave the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) the ability to negotiate maximum fair prices for select drugs. This means that CMS now has an important tool to resist high prices imposed by pharmaceutical companies and lower the cost that Medicare recipients pay for their drugs. So far, Medicare has negotiated the maximum fair prices for 10 drugs, which will go into effect January 1, 2026.
But according to a report released Wednesday by the watchdog group Public Citizen, the manufacturers behind these drugs are able to rely on another method to protect their profits: patent abuses and evergreening tactics.
The report defines "evergreening tactics" as the practice of "patenting trivial and/or obvious modifications of existing medications to lengthen exclusivity on branded medicines."
The makers of the drugs Eliquis, Imbruvica, Jardiance, Farxiga, and Entresto, for example, obtained patents on what constitute trivial or minor changes to earlier patent claims, "such as crystalline forms of drug compounds which would be discovered and managed during routine testing that is part of the drug approval process," according to Public Citizen. These new patents allow the manufacturers to extend their monopoly on these drugs.
"Big Pharma patent abuse is cheating Medicare enrollees of more affordable drugs and costing taxpayers billions," said Public Citizen Access to Medicines program researcher Jishian Ravinthiran in a statement.
"Patent abuses enable Big Pharma companies to unfairly extend their monopolies and keep prices artificially high. As CMS negotiates the prices Medicare will pay for top-selling drugs, it should take into account the billions we've already lost due to these patenting tactics," he added.
The report makes this same point, arguing that the agency's initial offers on pharmaceuticals should take into account how long-monopoly drugs have been able to obtain longtime exclusivities on medicines by manipulating patents.
This is paramount, Public Citizen argues, given the scope of lost savings. The group estimates that Medicare will lose somewhere between $4.9 and $5.4 billion in savings that should have accrued to taxpayers if four out of the 10 drugs did not take advantage of patenting tactics, and therefore would have faced greater competition prior to negotiation.
"These lost savings are nearly as much as what Medicare is expected to save if negotiated prices go into effect on all of the selected drugs in the first year of the program ($6 billion)," according to the report.
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Referencing analysis done in a separate report, Public Citizen estimated "that biosimilars could have entered the market after August 2019 were it not for Amgen's unwarranted patent exclusivities, and we calculated Medicare would have spent $1,891,500,836 less on a net basis had enrollees been able to use lower-cost alternatives by the time negotiated prices go into effect on January 1, 2026."
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The group accepted the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo, with the Nobel Committee honoring Nihon Hidankyo "for its efforts to achieve a world free of nuclear weapons."
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Tanaka warned that there are currently 12,000 nuclear warheads in the arsenals of the U.S., Russia, China, and six other countries, and 4,000 of those "could be launched immediately."
"This means that the damage that occurred in Hiroshima and Nagasaki could be multiplied by hundreds or even thousands," said Tanaka, who is 92. "Let us all strive together to ensure that humanity is not destroyed by nuclear weapons, and to create a human society where there are no nuclear weapons and no war."
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Tanaka said that "the nuclear taboo threatens to be broken," as evidenced by Israeli Heritage Minister Amihay Eliyahu's recent comment that a nuclear attack on Gaza would be "one way" to defeat Hamas.
"I am infinitely saddened and angered" by such statements, said Tanaka.
He described his experience as a 13-year-old when the U.S. bombed Nagasaki, just a couple of miles away from his family's house, which was crushed by the impact.
He said he later found the charred body of one of his aunts and saw his grandfather close to death from the burns that covered his body.
"The deaths I witnessed at that time could hardly be described as human deaths," Tanaka said. "There were hundreds of people suffering in agony, unable to receive any kind of medical attention."
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"It was their courage that enabled the [Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons] to be adopted, which represents the first progress on nuclear disarmament in decades," said Melissa Parke, executive director of ICAN, referring to the treaty that's been ratified by 73 countries.
"Listening to Mr. Tanaka describe the horrendous effects on his family and city when the Americans dropped their atomic bomb should convince world leaders they have to go beyond simply congratulating the hibakusha of Nihon Hidankyo for this award. They must honor them by doing what the hibakusha have long called for—urgently getting rid of nuclear weapons," said Parke. "That is the only way to ensure that what Mr. Tanaka and the other hibakusha have been through never happens to anyone ever again. As long as any nuclear weapons remain anywhere, they are bound one day to be used, whether by design or accident."
Jørgen Watne Frydnes, chair of the Nobel Committee, condemned the nine nuclear powers for "modernizing and building up their nuclear arsenals."
"It is naive to believe our civilization can survive a world order in which global security depends on nuclear weapons," Frydnes said. "The world is not meant to be a prison in which we await collective annihilation."
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"She is on a shamelessness tour," journalist Jeremy Scahill said of American diplomat Linda Thomas-Greenfield.
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The U.S. ambassador to the United Nations is facing backlash after delivering a speech earlier this week touting the universal "right to food" as the Israeli military—armed to the teeth with American weaponry—fuels widespread and increasingly deadly hunger in the Gaza Strip.
In remarks Monday at a gathering of U.N. and civil society leaders focused on global food insecurity, Thomas-Greenfield called hunger, starvation, and famine "man-made tragedies" that "can be stopped by us."
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Thomas-Greenfield's speech sparked derision given the Biden administration's continued military support for an Israeli government that has been accused of wielding starvation as a weapon of war in Gaza, where—according to the latest U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization assessment—food aid has reached an all-time low under Israel's suffocating blockade.
"Hunger is a man-made tragedy that you helped make in Gaza."
Oxfam and other human rights groups have said that by arming the Israeli military as it obstructs humanitarian aid, the Biden administration is complicit in the starvation of Palestinians in Gaza and Israel's repeated attacks on aid workers attempting to feed the enclave's hungry.
"She is on a shamelessness tour in her final weeks as U.S. ambassador to the U.N.," journalist Jeremy Scahill wrote Wednesday in response to Thomas-Greenfield's speech. "She presided over numerous cease-fire vetoes as part of an administration that facilitated Israel's starvation policy against the Palestinians of Gaza. Listen to her remarks on 'hunger' in that context."
Yesterday, @USUN brought together humanitarian leaders to discuss solutions to the global food insecurity crisis.
Hunger is a man-made tragedy. But if it caused by man, that means it can be stopped by us, too.
Every human being, everywhere, has the right to food. pic.twitter.com/zczlerRHEc
— Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield (@USAmbUN) December 10, 2024
Middle East scholar and analyst Assal Rad, wrote that Thomas-Greenfield's vetoes at the U.N. "have helped Israel continue its genocide and deliberately starving people."
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Despite Thomas-Greenfield's insistence that addressing global food insecurity has long been a priority for the world's wealthiest and most powerful nation, the U.S. and Israel were the only two countries to vote against a U.N. committee draft on the right to food in 2021.
On Tuesday, the Biden administration welcomed to the White House former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, who—along with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu—is facing an arrest warrant from the International Criminal Court for "the war crime of starvation as a method of warfare," among other crimes.
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