Justice Sotomayor expresses concern over Court’s true threat jurisprudence

  U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonya Sotomayor agreed with her colleagues that the Court should deny review in a true-threat case out of Florida, involving a man who uttered, while drunk, that he could blow up a liquor store.

  However, Sotomayor wrote a separate concurring opinion denying review in Perez v. Florida (16-6250) to express her concerns about holes in the Court’s current true-threat jurisprudence.

Gene Policinski: Examining the new importance of ‘where’ we speak

  When we say something that might be threatening, how much does where we say it matter?

  The U.S. Supreme Court agreed in June to examine that question from a new angle – the increasingly popular method of online comments and posts on social media, as distinct from directed or face-to-face exchanges.

  The First Amendment generally shields us from being punished for what we say, but there are exceptions, among them what is called a “true threat.”