Sean Sailor
February 24, 2010
Yesterday the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) opened their case before the U.S. Supreme Court to challenge a portion of the Patriot Act. The case was originally brought in 1998 on behalf of a human rights group, a retired federal administrative judge, a doctor, and several nonprofit groups. It challenges the constitutionality of the law (later incorporated into the Patriot Act) that makes it a crime to provide “material support” to groups the government has designated as “terrorist.”
The plaintiffs charge that the law goes too far in making speech advocating lawful, nonviolent activity a crime. The lower courts have unanimously declared several provisions of the law – including one added by the Patriot Act – unconstitutionally vague because they encompass speech and force citizens to guess as to their meaning.
However this is the first case of it’s kind before the U.S. Supreme Court to test the Patriot Act’s constitutionality.
CCR Attorney David Cole said:
“This statute is so sweeping that it treats human rights advocates as criminal terrorists, and threatens them with 15 years in prison for advocating nonviolent means to resolve disputes. In our view, the First Amendment does not permit the government to make advocating human rights or other lawful, peaceable activity a crime simply because it is done for the benefit of, or in conjunction with, a group the Secretary of State has blacklisted.
People and groups such as Humanitarian Law Project that CCR is representing in this case now before the Supreme Court.
“My speech is particularly nonviolent,” says Ralph Fertig, president of HLR “I’ve gone to jail in the United States for my advocacy for peace.”
Fertig and HLR have helped the Kurdistan Workers Party, known as the PKK, make human rights claims before international bodies. They have trained Kurdish leaders in peacemaking negotiations and have brought them to Washington to lobby. But when the PKK was designated an international terrorist organization under the Patriot Act the Humanitarian Law Project went to court.
The very heart of the matter before the court is free speech. Keep in mind, this provision of the Patriot Act that CCR is challenging is not a law aimed at terrorism directly- plans for or advocating violence, or at aiding in such acts or even a financial contribution to a certain group. Rather, speech as such. Note that the law is aimed at any type of “aid”, including information. What kind of information you might ask? State secrets? Top secret, classified matters of national security? No. And again no.
The provision is so sweeping as to include dissemination of any information that could be construed as “aiding” such a group. Indeed, this article itself could be considered aiding PKK. Without hyperbole, under the Patriot Act this article you are reading is illegal- and if you were to pass it on another you would be guilty also.
In fact, as Mr Cole pointed out, even filing this case on behalf of his American client was a violation of the provision.
And you might have thought you had freedom of speech. Not under the terms of the Patriot Act.
This case challenges those aspects of the “material support” statute that criminalize pure speech. Any speech that falls within these terms – no matter how peaceable and nonviolent – is a crime if communicated to, for, or with the collaboration of any organization placed on a list of “foreign terrorist organizations” maintained by the State Department. A conviction can result in sentences of 15 years to life.
As I pointed out earlier this month, the United States government gives military equipment, training and financial aid to the tune of $billions each year to one of the bloodiest terrorist organizations in the world- the AUC. An organization on the State Department’s own list of terrorist organizations that its illegal to give “material aid” to.
It will also be interesting to see how this free speech case pans out in light of the fact of the Supreme Court’s decision last month in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. That also was a free speech issue, one involving the question of incorporated entities and domestic political campaigning.
Eric Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project is simply about speech period.
Also at this time reports have it that the U.S. Senate is prepared to reauthorize the Patriot Act, without revision, before the deadline of this February 28 as part of a jobs bill with the full support of President Barrack Obama and Harry Reid.
Sean Sailor February, 2010
