Two and a half weeks into the six-year Senate term with which her constituents entrusted her, Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) has announced that she’s setting her sights on a different field of play. Bring on the 2020 presidential campaign.
Granite Grok’s Steve MacDonald has already outlined Sen. Harris’s distaste for the First Amendment and her hand-in-glove cooperation with the nation’s principal abortion provider. Touching on both these points is a court case to remember: NIFLA v. Becerra, the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2018 smackdown of a California law that was enacted on Sen. Harris’s watch when she was California’s attorney general.
With Harris’s enthusiastic support (which was carried on by Xavier Becerra, her successor as AG), California passed a law attempting to force pro-life pregnancy care centers to post government-dictated speech promoting abortion. That didn’t fly at the Supreme Court, which reversed a Ninth Circuit decision upholding the forced-speech law.
NIFLA v. Becerra was a 5-4 victory for the First Amendment, and it gave outgoing Justice Anthony Kennedy a chance to write a memorable concurring opinion.
…This law is a paradigmatic example of the serious threat presented when government seeks to impose its own message in the place of individual speech, thought, and expression. For here the State requires primarily pro-life pregnancy centers to promote the State’s own preferred message advertising abortions. This compels individuals to contradict their most deeply held beliefs, beliefs grounded in basic philosophical, ethical, or religious precepts, or all of these….Governments must not be allowed to force persons to express a message contrary to their deepest convictions. Freedom of speech secures freedom of thought and belief. This law imperils those liberties.
He might have added: Looking at you, Ms. Harris.
