Supreme Court begins season that has First and Second Amendment cases

The U.S. Supreme Court started its winter season of discontent on Monday, with a case involving a tow truck, a borrowed car, and a stash of drugs belonging to someone.

In Culley v. Marshall, two women had cars being borrowed by someone who had drugs in them. When police pulled the drivers over and discovered the drugs, the cars were seized. It took a year for each of these women to get their cars back, and they suffered economic damage, unable to get to work and unable to pay bills. The case involves their right to due process.

In November, the justices are planning to hear a couple of First Amendment cases, and another involving the Second Amendment.

In  O’Connor-Ratcliff v. Garnier, the question is, can members of a school board block critics from seeing their personal Facebook and Twitter Accounts?

In the second case, the city manager of Port Huron, Mich. blocked a critic on his Facebook page. The critic had been writing about the manager’s poor handling of the Covid pandemic.

In another case before the court, the question is, can someone get a trademark on the “Trump Too Small” phrase?

In 2016, Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, then a candidate for president, said Trump’s hand were small. Steve Elster attempted to register the phrase “Trump Too Small” and sell t-shirts with that printed on them to criticize the president. The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office denied his application, because it used the name of a living person who had not given permission.

The court will also hear a gun-rights case involving a Texas man who is challenging a federal ban on the possession of firearms by those who are subject to domestic violence restraining orders.

The Biden Administration appealed the case, known as United States v. Rahimi, after a federal appeals court invalidated the ban earlier this year. 

Zackey Rahimi, who had been involved in several shooting incidences, assaulted his ex-girlfriend in a Texas parking lot in 2019 and warned her that he would shoot her if she said anything about it to anyone. She did say something.

In February of 2020 a Texas state court issued a domestic violence restraining order against Rahimi, which by default prevented him from possessing firearms. He was warned by the judge that violating the order would be a federal felony.

The Rahimi is another moment when the high court may rule regarding the “history and tradition test,” that it had outlined in the earlier Bruen case in New York.