Stopping the Stop Woke Act

Phone calls from middle schoolers is not a way to influence Congress.

By and
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Despite a slow start to the week in legal news, Sarah and David have a tightly packed episode today starting with a dissent from denial from Justice Thomas on bias response teams at a Virginia university.

The Agenda:
—Bias response teams
—ACLU vs. NLRB
—Florida’s Stop Woke Act naw-dogged by 11th Circuit
—Texas’ law on minor access to explicit content at the Fifth Circuit
—TikTok: Welcome to the culture war
—Kevin Newsom’s speech on text, history, and tradition
—Be careful with tradition
—Understanding standing doctrine
—The Oscars and a good legal movie

Show Notes:
—Federalist Society 2024 National Student Symposium
—The Volokh Conspiracy
—Luis Parrales: The Oscars in an Age of Distraction
—MIT legal complaint

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Comments (45)
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  1. Avatar photo
    Gregory Forman

    Anatomy of a fall takes place in France.

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    Tele

    Re: Catcher In The Rye.

    I read it for the first time as the father of a 17 year old son.

    All I heard was UNRELIABLE NARRATOR.

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  3. SteveD

    I think the podcast and MSM overestimate how easy it would be to "ban" TikTok on today's internet. Even if TikTok remains a "Foreign Adversary Controlled Application", the House bill only prohibits US-based app stores from hosting and distributing the app. This would make things less convenient for TikTok users, but the app could still be downloaded from non-US servers to Android devices (easy) and iPhones (with a bit more difficulty). The TikTok website (and mobile website) aren't affected by the bill.

    I'm hardpressed to see how an actual ban could be implemented without deploying a China-style Great Firewall.

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  4. Brian L

    I saw a question on a tech site that might be right up AO's alley:
    Legally, could Congress force the Murdoch family to divest from Fox News & News Corp similar to the proposed TikTok bill?

    This question was so out of my league that I can't even speculate, and as you'd expect, the speculation on the tech site wasn't very informed.

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    1. BenP

      That's a good question, and one I'd like to hear considered. Do we have case history on Congress telling a specific business to find new owners?

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  5. Ncorsetti1

    Anatomy of a Fall takes place in France, not Canada.

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  6. Aaron H Frank

    Sarah said she doesn't understand or care about the inner lives of 15 year old boys. But that will change very soon Mama Isgur! It would be great to save that conversation and play it back in about 10-12 years.

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  7. David Moore

    Question from a non-lawyer wrt the "Stop Woke Act." I get that the state can't prevent a company from conducting virtually any training it wishes on 1A grounds. However, I have read that some training requires participants to list their "privileges" and other sins. Wouldn't that be considered compelled speech and couldn't this compulsion by the company be prohibited?

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    1. BenP

      I'm pretty sure prohibitions on compelling speech apply only to the government.

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      1. David Moore

        Thanks, that makes sense.

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      Kmregan7

      Maybe. I went through training and one of the requirements was to list things in my life I’m grateful for…is that compelled speech?
      Seems pretty similar- a way to make people think about their perspective and to be aware of different experiences.

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  8. Aecrowder

    Sarah and David, have either of you read Nikole Hannah Jone's most recent piece in the NYT, "The Colorblindness Trap"? I would love to hear you guys discuss it, since it's essentially a rebuke of the Supreme Court's recent rulings on affirmative action and the notion of "colorblind" legislation.

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  9. BenP

    Am I the only one who is unmoved by the "China is collecting our data!" argument? Everyone's collecting our data, y'all. And if the fear is what a government might do with it, I worry more about my own government than I do about China's government. Not because I think the CCP are beneficent (they're awful), but because the CCP don't have the power to do anything bad to me. It seems weird to be more concerned about our privacy w.r.t. a foreign government than with our own.

    I would love to see legislation that limits what kind of data tech companies can collect and save and share about us. I just think the most serious privacy concerns are domestic. Pass some legislation addressing privacy across the board, please. It's easy to play hardball with ByteDance; I'll be impressed when they do the same for Meta and Google and the like.

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    NashLives

    Sarah likes classical music?! How has this not come up before, we ~need~ more information. What's your favorite recording of well tempered clavier? Gould? Perahia? Richter? I've been running through Beethoven's piano concertos recently, #5 (op73) is so great.

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