News/Commentary

Activists still targeting SC justices’ homes, marshals trained to arrest only as ‘a last resort’

May 14, 2023 | | Print Article

Left-wing extremists continue to protest outside the homes of America’s Supreme Court justices, and not surprisingly, the media are continuing to defend them.

Take NBC News, which ran a piece Sunday suggesting that these protesters are just harmless people having a good time and bothering nobody.

“As the group of about a dozen protesters rounded the corner and approached Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s house on a leafy suburban street, the two deputy U.S. marshals on guard watched unmoved from their perch in the driveway. One whispered into his radio. The other took a sip from a coffee cup,” the piece reads.

“The protesters, who had gathered on the evening of May 4, walked past the house singing ‘I went down to the rich man’s house and took back what he stole from me.’ One was holding a sign reading ‘For sale: one corrupt SCOTUS,’ using an acronym for Supreme Court of the United States. Another sign said, ‘expand the court.’ The protesters, mostly women, were in good humor, laughing among themselves as they marched,” it continues.

The piece goes on to decry how this “relatively orderly scene, with no sign of any local police presence, is in stark contrast to the portrait painted by Republicans and conservative activists.”

This is true, but the question then becomes, would the left tolerate equal protests outside the homes of liberal Supreme Court justices? Most suspect not, especially since it’s ILLEGAL, according to federal law.

“Legal experts generally agree that targeted, stationary protests outside of a justice’s home are prohibited under federal law — an effort to protect judges from undue pressures or influence,” even PolitiFact notes.

Though not surprisingly, the leftist “fact-checker”  then claims that it is being prohibited doesn’t necessarily make it illegal. Huh?

PolitiFact’s caveat seems like a perfect example of the media running interference for the protesters, whom Republicans for their part would like to see arrested.

“There is a federal law that prohibits the protesting of judges’ homes. Anybody protesting a judge’s home should be arrested on the spot by federal law enforcement. If [protesters] want to raise a First Amendment defense, they are free to do so,” Sen. Tom Cotton said last year.

“I don’t advocate for arresting people protesting on public streets in Washington, D.C., the nation’s capital. I do believe they should be arrested for protesting in the homes of judges, jurors and prosecutors. Federal law prohibits an obvious attempt to influence or intimidate judges, jurors and prosecutors,” he added.

As previously reported, the protests first erupted when someone — nobody still knows who — leaked to the press that the high court was on the verge of repealing Roe v. Wade. This bombshell leak led to protests outside the homes of every conservative Supreme Court justice, including Brett Kavanaugh.

Kavanaugh is of particular note because one “protester” showed up at his home with the intent to kill him:

This particular story was buried by the press, prompting criticism from liberal comedian Bill Maher.

“If this has been a liberal Supreme Court justice that someone came to kill, it would’ve been on the front page. If it’s not part of something that feeds our narrative, f–k it, we bury it,” he said at the time.

Dovetailing back to the wider protests, the protesters have faced zero consequences for their actions, in part because the Marshals Services were ordered to protect the justices but not interfere with “lawful, First Amendment protected activity,” according to training slides reviewed by NBC News.

“The training materials specifically mention the picketing and parading law, with one slide saying that the statute’s broad language ‘directly implicates’ acts protected by the First Amendment. As such, the slide indicated that the law should be interpreted to cover only ‘criminal threats and intimidation.’ The same slide also said that arrests of protesters would be “a last resort to prevent physical harm to the justices,” the outlet notes.

Here’s the problem: The Biden administration has not granted the same privileges to pro-life protesters who sometimes protest outside abortion clinics. Unlike the Supreme Court protesters, they’ve faced arrest and prosecution. Why might that be?

Because, critics say, it’s all about politics to the Biden administration, and unfortunately for the high court’s conservative justices, the men and mainly women protesting them are on the right political side …

Vivek Saxena
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