[mfer]

The court isn't tasked with doing what right. Who defines what's "right"?

The court is tasked with judging based on the laws at hand. If those laws are flawed or wrong but legal, it's upon congress to change the laws rather than the courts to decide right or wrong.

The court should be focused on legal or illegal. This is how the separation of powers work in the US.

When laws are "broken" we should be looking at congress.

[TheRealPomax]

Fun fact: no. You're thinking of the regular courts.

Unlike the regular courts, the supreme court specifically has the power to just go "nope, this law is now void" if they deem it unconstitutional, and fun fact: that constitution sure is open to interpretation, hoo boy. Imagine if a corrupt justice was allowed to just keep on ruling, that sure would make for a fair and just system. Like say someone who had to rule on cases involving their friends who bought them millions of dollars in gifts and instead of recusing themselves, take the case and rule in their friends' favor.

And no way for the people to intervene.

SCOTUS has serious problems.

[atmavatar]

I think we can forgive anyone who expresses skepticism about the current court's adherence to the spirit and even the letter of the law after it created presidential immunity out of thin air in Trump v. United States, both because it ran afoul of the Supreme Court's tradition of issuing narrow rulings but also because there's literally nothing in the constitution about executive immunity. As there exists a grant of immunity for legislators (Article I, Section 6), it's clear the framers understood the concept but chose to exclude it for the president.

It's like the current court took a look at all the vitriol over Citizens United being one of the worst decisions in history and went "hold my beer".

That said, the present issue of TikTok seems like an open-and-shut first amendment case, regardless whether it is ultimately a tool for influence operations by a hostile foreign power. The price we pay for freedom of speech is that it enables bad faith actors as well.

[TheRealPomax]

It doesn't though: one can fully argue that tik tok is one of several platforms through which people can express themselves, which means no one's rights are being taken away by shutting down tik-tok. It would be an incredibly bad-faith decision, but watch them make it anyway.

Similarly, tik tok can't argue that they're press, even if some of their users might use the platform as a news and news commentary outlet. Again, shutting down the platform doesn't prevent those folks from continuing to do so on another platform.

There's, unfortunately, nothing open-and-shut about this case. Especially with a supreme court that seems quite keen on backing up the establishment.