Advisory Opinions - Twitter, Trafficking, and Section 230

Episode Date: December 15, 2022

It’s a lighting-round AO! David and Sarah start with updates on the Loudoun County scandals, the travails of Biden’s student loan forgiveness plan, and the sanctioning of Stop the Steal lawyers. They then turn to the least palatable of topics and discuss Section 230 and social media’s liability (or lack thereof) in the spread of child pornography. Show Notes: -Challenges to Biden’s student loan forgiveness reach SCOTUS -The 10th Circuit sanctions Stop the Steal lawyers -Reason’s Elizabeth Nolan Brown on Twitter, sex trafficking, and Section 230 -David on Serena Fleites v. MindGeek -David on America’s child pornography crisis -Prince William and Kate’s Christmas photo Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

And if you're just joining us, we're live from Evan's living room. It looks like Evan is about to purchase tickets to today's match. Kate, the real test is, will he use the BMO Toronto FC Cashback Mastercard? Well, if he wants to earn cashback on his purchases, he will, and... Oh, hang on. He's at the computer with his card, and he's done it! Oh, clicky-click magic trick! The clicker around the room! You guys just about finished?

Sorry, we got excited. Thanks for snagging those tickets. Make every purchase highlight worthy with the BMO Toronto FC Cashback Mastercard. You ready? I was born ready. Welcome to the Advisory Opinions Podcast. I'm David French with Sarah Isger, and we're going to be popping around to a lot of different topics today. We're going to briefly hit a few things. First, we're going to talk about an indictment in Loudoun County,

Virginia, which is highly relevant because we briefly talked about Loudoun County just last podcast. We're going to talk about another student loan cert grant, a imposition of sanctions on Trumpist attorneys. And then we're going to have a kind of a longer talk about social media and sex trafficking law. Super pleasant topic, but very important one. But yeah, let's start off with Loudoun County, Virginia. So Sarah, last podcast, if listeners recall, we talked about how a grand jury had been convened and had discovered that Loudoun County had mishandled two sexual assault cases. And we talked about that in the context of Loudoun County

schools. We talked about that in the context of litigation at school, litigation involving public schools. And then right after we finished the podcast, or maybe an hour or so after he finished the podcast, this little news item came across the airwaves. Loudoun County Public School's former superintendent, Scott Ziegler, and public information officer, Wade Beard, were indicted by a special grand jury amid an eight-month investigation into the district's mishandling of two sexual assault cases. Ziegler was charged with one count of false publication, one count of prohibited conduct, that's an interesting name for us, for criminal law, prohibited conduct, and one count of penalizing an employee for a court appearance.

And one count of penalizing an employee for a court appearance. The indictments were issued earlier this summer. And Beard was charged with a count of felony perjury. So, yeah, what's interesting to me about that, again, to remind listeners, we had on a Loudoun County parent several months ago to talk about some of the challenges and problems in Loudoun County schools. Loudoun County schools had become a matter of national controversy surrounding issues of race and gender. And now we have an indictment.

Sarah, it appears that things were pretty much as bad as a lot of activists were saying they were. Well, enough to get an indictment at least. Right. We don't have a conviction. Interestingly, the ones against Ziegler, the superintendent, are misdemeanors. The other guy who's the public information officer,

I believe, that's the felony indictment. Right, right. And note that it's for perjury. So once again, this is the coverup, not the crime, if you will. Quit lying to people, man. Yeah. Also, something to highlight here is that the special grand jury, that the special grand jury, those are different. You know, they convene for a lot longer. They're not meeting once a week like other grand juries.

And, you know, this was announced by the Virginia Attorney General himself. So this was not just a local DA pursuing this. So why does that matter? Because I think until this goes one way or the other at trial, or maybe even appeal, you're going to hear one side say exactly what you just said. See, this was as bad as all these parents were saying. And if you remember back to when this happened, this all becomes very publicly known when a father at a school board meeting right um starts asking about these uh non-gendered bathrooms and sexual assault and the superintendent said we've never had a sexual assault in those bathrooms and the father starts

screaming that like his daughter was sexually assaulted and like how dare they just lie to his face. And the superintendent calls the police. Basically, that guy is taken out of the school board meeting by the police. Now, this is at the height, if you remember, of sort of school board meltdown threats, all of that. And so everyone kind of went to their corners of who was right and who was wrong about this thing. As it turns out, I mean, look, the facts are egregious. Whether they're criminally egregious or not is a different thing that we will continue to follow on this. But after that student was sexually assaulted by a male student

in that bathroom, they just transferred him to a different school where he very violently sexually assaulted another student in a classroom that time at that school. So, I mean, you have a very preventable sexual assault, frankly, in that second situation, if not the first one, by the way, but certainly at the point the school sort of Catholic priesthood their problem. Not good. Like the facts are really bad. But in terms of that school board meeting and whether you're on the dad's side or the superintendent's side,

that became kind of a Rorschach test. I think these indictments will look like that as well. Misdemeanors against the superintendent brought by the virginia attorney general we'll see yeah we'll see what that trial looks like that's a good point that's a and you know the reason why of course this became a flashpoint is loudon county schools became sort of ground zero of the battle over teaching race and gender identity in schools. And that's part of why we were talking about it last week. This was the school district with the student ambassadors

who are supposed to anonymously report bias incidents at their school. Social justice students only need apply. Right, right. Yeah. So here's ground zero. And it's ground zero for the race issues. It's ground zero over gender identity issues. And the question was, was this assault initially, the question was, was this assault perhaps

facilitated by the gender neutral bathroom policy? But it turns out the assault happened before the gender-neutral bathroom policy. And it's not necessarily tied to the student's gender identity so much as the student was just a really deeply troubled individual who acted out in a number of ways. And that the entire episode, I don't think, there's not very many people you're going to find who say that Loudoun County Schools handled

this properly. But here's where the bathroom policy did come into play. So I totally agree with you that I mean, it's just fact, right? The bathroom policy was not in effect and this student's assault does not seem related to the bathroom policy or to his own gender identity.

He was wearing a skirt at the time, but that's not how he got access to the student or to the second sexual assault that he committed. But the school's handling of it seems very related to their own views on wanting to protect their bathroom policy and wanting to make sure that nothing could derail sort of their progressive utopia train and that's why i think that father was just so outraged because he felt like his daughter's, you know, violent, traumatic sexual assault was being swept under the rug for political reasons. And in that case, I think there is a lot of evidence for that, even if the underlying sexual assault wasn't caused by it. I mean, again, like, and to me, that's in some ways far more frustrating. A minor was sexually assaulted violently at your school and you decided not to do anything about it because you didn't want headlines to question your bathroom policy, which it had nothing to do with to begin with.

You would have been dragging me out by the police, too. Right. Yeah. The idea that you're going to cover this up because you want a sort of pristine record to present to the public before you enact this change. Yeah, there's a host of problems with this. And so I think it's going to be very interesting to see how the prosecution goes. But the facts that are in evidence in the public record, putting aside the criminal charges against the former superintendent, but the facts and evidence, again, in the public record are really damaging, really damaging for the school. And look, you know, the bottom line is they echo the way a lot of institutions have completely mishandled sexual assault. have completely mishandled sexual assault. And this is something that has been a persistent problem institutionally in the United States of America

at every level where there has just been a constant, persistent mishandling of sexual assault and mishandling of sex crimes. And that's going to be implicated in the last topic that we cover. But well, before we leave this, I just, I want to read why I'm so skeptical of the indictment.

Ah, please. And I do mean skeptical, not that I think it's definitely not going to work out. Just right. Why I mentioned the fact that, or why I was less enthused, perhaps that this was a done deal.

So, um um that first misdemeanor here's the statutory language uh Ziegler quote did knowingly and willfully state deliver or transmit by any means whatever to any publisher or employee of a publisher of any newspaper magazine or other publication, radio station, television station, cable news, any false and untrue statement, knowing the same to be false or untrue concerning any person or corporation with intent that the same shall be published,

broadcast or otherwise. So basically saying something you know to be false and allowing it to be distributed through the media. And it's referring to that statement he made at the school board meeting that gets the dad super mad. Here's the statement. To my knowledge, we don't have any record of assaults happening in our bathrooms.

That was a month after his daughter had just been assaulted. Right. Now, I do think it's clear that Ziegler knew about that assault at the time he said that line. On the other hand, he said he thought he was answering a question about assaults in bathrooms due to the school's transgender bathroom policy. So you're going to have to show that what he said he knew to be false and how he understood that to be said. And you run into a little bit of that problem that we saw in the Clinton lawyer case that was brought by Durham. It matters a lot what you thought you were saying and the context of how you were saying it. The context was about the transgender bathroom policy. You know, I don't know how that's going

to turn out. And I think the context matters. The second and third are retaliation against an employee for expressing views on a matter of public concern. That, you know, that's going to be much easier left to my mind. But again, these are all misdemeanors. And then, of course, there's the perjury, which perjury is hard, but it's not impossible. Yeah, not impossible. Right, right. Exactly. Well, should we move on to student loan cert grant, Sarah? Absolutely. So the Supreme Court granted a second Biden student loan forgiveness case

and consolidated it for hearing. This is that Texas Fifth Circuit case that we talked about. I did not think that that would happen. They moved incredibly quickly. This case is pretty different on the standing question. This is brought on behalf of, well, Job Creators Network files the lawsuit on behalf of two borrowers who don't qualify for all the program's benefits. They're arguing that the eligibility criteria is arbitrary, a word that should set off little ding-dings for you. Yeah. And that because it didn't go through the APA process, they did not have a chance to engage in the public comment, voice their disagreement, and why they thought it was

arbitrary. I think that's a really tough road for standing because that's every single program where you think the eligibility requirements should have been different. It should have included you. It makes it very difficult to ever set a floor or a ceiling on any public program. on public comment a little bit stronger, but I do think there's a chance that the Supreme Court is going to hear these consolidated cases almost for the purpose of just the standing part, you know, finding standing in one and not finding standing in the other.

But yeah, so now we've got two of the six that are going up to the big house. Yeah, that was my instinct as well, that they're going to, they're granting them both. And then we're going to have a lot on standing. I mean, ultimately some on merits as well, of course, but a lot on standing. I could easily see standing in one,

not standing on the other, an opportunity to use this case, not just to decide student loans, but to maybe articulate some standing rules and standards that will be helpful going forward as we continue to have and will continue to have massive numbers of legal challenges to administrative actions.

But, you know, Sarah, I had a moment this week that reminded me of the incredible need for this podcast. Because I was at an event and somebody was student loan eligible for student loan relief under the Biden plan, super smart person, super engaged person, and had no idea why it was being blocked. And that, and my first thought was, well, you need to listen to advisory opinions. But my other, it was another reminder, I think, that even when people are really engaged in politics and really do follow issues, we have a huge civics problem in this country. Just a huge problem of not understanding how laws are made and who makes laws. Oh, see, I think it's a huge media problem

because the headlines just blare Biden's student loan program put on pause. I mean, I find it hard, you know, for this podcast when we prepare for it and I'm just trying to find, you know, the opinion or something. I'll Google it to find a news story that I think will link to the opinion. So I end up reading a lot of news stories, many of which don't even link to the opinion. What do you think, David? 75%? Maybe higher than that? Oh, true, true. Absolutely. You cannot get to the opinion from the news story. And the news story is so top line as to make it nearly impossible to figure out what actually happened in the case. And I get it. They don't, you know, it is hard for a news industry today that is relying increasingly on younger and younger people having to pay lower and lower salaries. You don't have the, you know, gumshoe reporter who's been on the, you know, trade negotiations beat for 30 years

and knows the ins and outs and the full history of everything that's gone on. There are some fabulous legal reporters out there, but they're concentrated at very, very few publications. Interestingly, David, and, you know, people are probably thinking, New York Times, Washington Post, yep few publications. Interestingly, David, and you know, people are probably thinking New York Times, Washington Post, yep, Wall Street Journal, they all have great legal reporters. But I do want to make a plug for the Texas Tribune. Because they do tend to link to the opinions. And for a regional publication, I think they are,

a regional publication, I think they are, they're, they're performing outside their coverage. It's nice. Yeah, no, that's, you're exactly right. When I see Texas Tribune coverage, really of anything, I have invariably been impressed by it. It is, it's one of those regional publications that is performing at a top level. And it kind of reminds me more of the old school media days where you would go to a major city and they're going to have their major city newspaper. And it's going to be a huge, impressive operation rather than sort of the stripped down. And look, a lot of people are doing heroic work in these stripped down, Gannett-owned papers, but it used to be fundamentally different. And I think there's a whole younger generation that just has no knowledge of that, no memory. There's no

recollection of really robust local media. Yeah, I mean, the Baltimore Sun used to be a prestige publication. Houston Chronicle, obviously, is where I grew up. I mean, I grew up thinking the Houston Chronicle and the New York Times were basically the same thing, just for different cities.

Yeah. I mean, there were so many important regional papers. The Chicago Tribune rivaled any of the, you know, Washington Post, New York Times type places. And there was the Chicago Sun-Times. You know, it's interesting because when you talk about this as a media issue,

which I agree with, is that the pieces that I write that literally I get some of the most positive feedback on are some of the ones that I think are the most basic, where I just sort of walk through a legal issue. Just walk through A to B to C to D, and people will respond incredibly positively to this. And I'm thinking, well, that wasn't hard. I know. You know, there's nothing, no real insight there. There's no real original thought, but it's just walking through.

But the problem is when you have a 26-year-old writing that, they have to rely on calling other people and getting quotes from them. And they have to write six stories that day. So they're not able to dive into the weeds of it. You just, and when you break down the process, you'll see why you break down the process, you'll see why you get very high level headline driven pieces about legal news and why, yeah,

very few articles dive into what standing actually is, why some standing claims are better than others, and the fact of why the underlying student loan issue isn't really disputed, even on the left, that if you can get in past the standing doctrine, this thing falls like a flan in the cupboard, man. Yeah, yeah. And the student loan issue in particular, because it is really emotionally fraught. And the student loan issue in particular, because it is really emotionally fraught. I think we've discussed this before that amongst your administrative law issues, it's become, it's been one of the more intensely argued sort of in the court of public opinion. I think the only one that I've seen recently, like of administrative law issues where there was more really intense emotional argument was the travel ban. And a lot of that intensity was related to

that initial imposition of the ban and a lot of the chaos at the airports and everything that occurred. I honestly was a little bit taken by surprise at the intensity of the emotion surrounding the student loan forgiveness issue. And then you're sitting there and you're kind of left explaining how laws are made. And it's strange. At one level, it just feels strange that there's an enormous amount of intensity against a background of an enormous amount of ignorance. And if you have no idea that what Biden did was at all unusual, you know, then you start to understand why people look at the courts askance and they say, what, you know, what are you guys doing? I mean, this is, this is an executive order. Don't, or this isn't an, you know, a, a, this is a administrative

action. Don't presidents do this all the time? And it, it's a problem. It's a real problem. So that's why you should listen to this podcast and share it with all your friends. Here come the carrots making their way upfield, followed by the whole wheat bread, over to the two dozen eggs. Sir, do you do this every time? Sorry, I've been a little excited ever since I got this BMO Toronto FC cashback MasterCard. Oh, and the broccoli boots it over the line! What a goal! How would you like to pay, sir?

Credit, please. Make every purchase a win with the BMO Toronto FC cashback MasterCard with up to 5% cashback on your purchases in your first three months. Terms and conditions apply. Next. All right.

Next, we have a sanctions order, Sarah. So here's Reuters reporting on what occurred. A U.S. appeals court on Tuesday upheld nearly $187,000 in monetary sanctions against two lawyers who filed and lost an, quote, utterly baseless lawsuit challenging Democrat Joe Biden's 2020 presidential win over Donald Trump. This ruling was by three Tenth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals judges, two Bush appointees, one Biden appointee. So once again, this is yet another case, Sarah, in my piece that is still yet unwritten, explaining how Republican-nominated judges have stood in the gap for our electoral system.

But we just sit here saying we need more lawyers explaining the law in the world. Well, not these lawyers. And let me just tell you, read an opening of the opinion, sort of the background of the opinion. The plaintiffs sought to pursue a civil rights class action alleging that the defendants violated the constitutional rights of every person registered to vote in the November 2020 election for president of the United States.

And who were the defendants? The lead defendant is Mark Zuckerberg, individually. Brian Kemp, individually, governor of Georgia. Brad Raffensperger individually, secretary of state of Georgia, and so on and so on. And then it ends with John Doe's one through 10,000.

In other words, they sued up to 10,000 unknown defendants to challenge the election of 2020 and got hit with massive sanctions as a result of what they did. Sarah, we've talked about sanctions before. Any additional thoughts on this case? No, just one of the judges on the panel, Timothy Timkovich of the 10th Circuit, Bush appointee, as you mentioned. And there will be a lot of listeners on this podcast who have clerked for Judge Timkovich. So kudos, Timkovich family. It's a proud day. It is. It is. And I think the rates utterly baseless might actually understate how bad that lawsuit was. But because I'm just going to tell you, litigators know, non-litigators who listen may not know this, but sanctions awards of that magnitude are not normal. It is not usual. You have to file a pretty lame lawsuit to be hit with sanctions at all, much less sanctions of that magnitude. Yeah, I mean, what I find, if you're listening

to this and wondering, now, wait a second, you filed a frivolous lawsuit, you get hit with sanctions. The district judge had to spend time on your frivolous lawsuit. Then they had to spend time sanctioning you for the frivolous lawsuit. Now we have three appellate judges spending time writing a 19-page opinion, rehashing why your lawsuit is totally frivolous and the standards for sanctions. Aren't we just spending a lot of time on a frivolous lawsuit? Yes. Yes, we are. That's why sanctions are actually pretty unusual. Because generally speaking, it makes more sense to simply dismiss your maybe frivolous lawsuit than it does to do all of this. You do all of this because it was so frivolous that it warrants the time of this many courts, this many judges to punish you for wasting

judicial resources by wasting more judicial resources. Yeah. And one thing I also want to point out, and this is something I've pointed out before, but I think it's worth repeating, is I think part of the explanation for the 2022 elections going off without really any hitch or much of a contest outside of Carrie Lake in Arizona. And Carrie Lake's contest, she's filed a lawsuit contesting the election, and it's, in my view, likely to be sanctioned as well. But her Stop the Steal movement is fizzled from the beginning.

I think one of the prime reasons why there was not a real movement towards contesting some of these 2022 elections. One is, of course, Donald Trump was not specifically on the ballot and then saying it was stolen. That's reason number one. But reason number two, there have been a lot of legal consequences that have been imposed or are might be imposed for the way in which people spewed lies into the public square in 2020. And so there are a lot of, Sarah, as you know, and husband of the pod is engaged in some of this. There have been major cases filed against Fox,

Newsmax, OAN, Sidney Powell, Rudy Giuliani, various television hosts. There have been major cases filed against Fox, Newsmax, OAN, Sidney Powell, Rudy Giuliani, various television hosts. There have been sanctions imposed on attorneys who filed election challenges in Colorado, in Michigan, and elsewhere. And I think a message was sent. I think a message was sent that if you're going to challenge an election, it's not just going to be all upside for you. It's not just going to be you get to rake in donor dollars, that you get to be on Fox. The reality might be that, nope, Fox and Newsmax aren't going to put you on anymore because you're

a risk. And whatever donor dollars you raise, you might pay out in sanctions and more. And I do think that the background of the litigation response to the Stop the Steal movement might have made a difference in 2022. And I think, Sarah, I think you're the first person I heard say that. So I think I'm just amplifying your point. What's next? All right. Well, shall we move on to the least palatable topic um you know this podcast specializes in talking about the unpalatable but this may be the least palatable thing uh that we've talked about in a long time yes Yes. So we're going to talk about Twitter, social media, and sex trafficking. And the reason why we're going to talk about it is that Twitter kind of blew up over the last couple of days over claims and allegations that Elon Musk had uncovered that Twitter had insufficient safeguards in place to protect people from exploitation on the platform,

either from child sexual exploitation and abuse or sharing of non-consensual sexual activity or sharing of consensual sexual activity, or sharing of consensual sexual activity, but no consent to the sharing of the consensual activity, revenge porn type content. And it is one of these issues that is a massive social, cultural, and legal problem. And I think it's maybe worth spending a little bit of time talking about like why Twitter might be in the crosshairs. Are there any problems with Twitter being in the crosshairs? How is Twitter similar to or different from say a company that I've

written about called Pornhub? I wrote a, and we'll put this in the show notes. I wrote a, in July, I wrote a pretty long, a pretty long piece about a court case challenging Pornhub. And sort of the instigator for this is after Elon Musk took over, there was a reference to a case filed against Twitter where a, where child sexual abuse material of a 13-year-old, somebody 13 or 14 involved in sexual activity

was put on Twitter. A link to a video of it was put on Twitter. Twitter didn't initially take it down, took it down several days later. A lawsuit was filed essentially claiming that what Twitter did, that Twitter profits from or benefits from sexually abusive material. And this is brought under the 2018 Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act, which makes it a federal crime to host digital content that facilitates prostitution. This is legislation that tweaked the famous Section 230 of the Communications

Decency Act, which Section 230, if you've listened to this podcast for a while, we've talked about this a lot. Section 230 essentially says, look, if you are a platform like Twitter, Section 230 essentially says, look, if you are a platform like Twitter and you host user generated content on this platform as a general matter, you're not going to be held liable for the user generated content. The user who generated the content is liable. You are not. And you are still not liable even if you moderate the content. are still not liable even if you moderate the content, if you try to moderate for, you know, example, to remove objectionable material. And so the question is, and there's a case filed in the Northern District of California, the question is whether the temporary hosting of childhood, child sexual material, in this case, tweets with a link, violate the law. And this is different from the case that I talked about, which was the case involving Pornhub, where Pornhub was directly hosting the pornographic material. Pornhub obviously benefits from hosting pornographic material.

That is, it's called Pornhub. It is designed to, from the ground up, to host pornographic material to profit from hosting. To be a hub of porn. To be a hub. And so, Twitter has pornographic material on it, but it is not a Pornhub. And the facts involving Twitter are different from the facts involving Pornhub. The problem with Twitter seems to be a delay in removing objectionable material. uh breaking all of this down that was really well done i think uh by uh a really a lengthy piece by elizabeth nolan brown at reason that i think is really well done and i filibustered a lot about this just now sarah um but what a listener alerted us to this issue and we both thought it was interesting and important what are are some of your initial thoughts? Well, the most interesting cases that we talk about in the podcast for me, David, are the bad facts make bad law type setups where nobody is good with revenge porn for a 13-year-old sitting on the internet and any social media platform,

doing nothing about it, being lazy about taking it down, however you want to look at this, it sat up there. And this 13-year-old did not consent to that. And it's inappropriate on every single level that I can come up with. My outrage, I hope, is coming through at that fact. But the law itself seems geared towards something totally different. Sex trafficking, you know, has of value and that element of, um, you know, coercion, fraud, uh, force, et cetera. And so this is how you get sort of expanded federal criminal, sorry, yes, federal criminal laws, but just expanding federal law in general is that we wanted to reach things that we

all think are morally outraging. And we don't really care in those moments about limiting it to what the text says. And that's where this becomes interesting to me. Because the law in question does not appear to have been meant to cover this and yet we all want something to cover it don't we right right yeah that's a really good point and you know when i wrote about the mind geek mind geek is the company that owns uh porn hub when i wrote about that one of the things that no in that circumstance the facts were extraordinarily extraordinarily damning forhub in the way in which not only they benefited from videos, underage videos of the particular plaintiffs, but when Visa temporarily suspended its business with MindGeek. MindGeek. This is mind-blowing, by the way. If you think that this site was sort of on the up and up and, oh, just one video leaked through and they responded poorly to one video. moving over 10 million unverified videos from its sites, constituting over 80% of its content. That's mind blowing. In other words, to win Visa back, to win Visa back,

MindGeek slash Pornhub was only comfortable with only about 20% of its content. That's stunning stuff. So that's a different case from Twitter. But it seems to me, Sarah, I agree with you on the danger of looking at outrageous sets of facts and then going to find the statute that you think slash hope could cover the outrageous sets of facts versus you see outrageous sets of facts and then you craft statutes that are specifically tailored to deal with the outrageous sets of facts, which I think is the more sound approach overall.

And one of the approaches that I've talked about is, look, if you're going to host pornographic content, and pornographic content is protected under the First Amendment, not obscene, not obscenity, obscenity is not pornography, non-obscene pornography is, pornography is, having ironclad age and consent verification requirements and age-gating technology is, to me, the approach that is going to be the best approach moving forward. And then, of course, attaching penalties to violations of those requirements. And that seems to me to be the sound approach. Yeah, I like the way Elizabeth Nolan Brown walked through this at Reason, but the 13 or 14 year old snapchatted videos of the sexual content, meant to share it with a peer, accidentally shared it with an adult who then allegedly blackmailed one of the teens into providing additional sexual content.

That perpetrator, who could have very easily been targeted under the Sex Trafficking Act, by the way, I think. Yes, for sure. Or at least for blackmail and soliciting obscenity and all of those things, but they go after Twitter. So the John Doe contacts Twitter. Twitter says no action will be taken at this time. Doe's mom reaches out to Homeland Security, who reaches out to Twitter. Then Twitter takes it down. Now Doe sues Twitter,

accusing it of sex trafficking, benefiting from participation in sex trafficking venture receipt and distribution of child pornography negligence and violation of california's product liability laws um and elizabeth nolan brown's point is it's hard to see how this qualifies as sex trafficking minors were involved. No one paid them for sex. Nobody got anything of value for sending or posting the videos, but they're labeling this as illegal commercial sexual activity so that it can fall under that sex trafficking statute. Again, I think that social media platforms can do a lot more.

Yeah. And a lot of them do a lot and we should give them credit the the major ones that you hear about have huge teams that do just this and it's a horrible horrible job there's been i listen to a podcast about you know someone's life and what it's like to look at um either sexually obscene material involving minors or horribly violent material every 30 seconds for your entire day's work every day day in and day out and say yes no yes no no no you know um and they have quotas for it it's awful and people burn out very quickly but i'm glad they're doing someone is doing doing that work. But I also care pretty deeply

about keeping laws to what they say. And I don't know if I agree with Elizabeth Nolan Brown that the sex trafficking statute can't reach something like this but I'm glad someone's taking the somewhat unpopular job of explaining why something egregious

and horrible may not fall under the law you want it to fall under. So thank you to her for writing that up. Let's look, can we link this to student debt cancellation? Yes. Okay. I promise this isn't a stretch. The reality is that all too often in both civil and criminal contexts in this country is we will say here is something we want to happen. Here is a legal change we want. Here is a person that we want to see punished. And, you know, we then go searching for the legal way to do it. And sometimes it's there.

Look, sometimes it's there. Look, sometimes it's there. Absolutely. I think, for example, if you look at the egregious actions of Trump leading up to January 6th and some of his actions in the Stop the Steal movement, I think criminal law is implicated in some of those. Not all of them, even as bad as many of them were, not all of them, some of them. So

sometimes you find a statute that's directly on point. The Georgia criminal prohibition against soliciting election fraud seems pretty on point. But a lot of the terrible stuff on January 6th, A lot of the terrible stuff on January 6th, it was just morally terrible. It wasn't legally. And so we often see something wrong and then search for the way or see something that we want to accomplish and then try to jam the law into that purpose. And that creates a lot of – there are a lot of negative consequences to that. And that's one of the ways in which constitutional rights can be violated, for example. And the fact of the matter is, though, as you said, we have a huge problem with this kind of abusive material online.

And it is time for a very serious federal legislative effort to deal with it. I've written about it at length. I've written about it in the dispatch. I've written about it at the Atlantic. I'll put my pieces in the show notes there. And placing the burden on anybody who's going to disseminate this material to verify age and to verify consent in an ironclad way, to me is an indispensable step at starting, at least starting the process of getting this under more control. Agreed.

Well, David, let's make this a quick podcast. I have two additional things for you. Well, David, let's make this a quick podcast. I have two additional things for you. One, have you seen the Windsor's Christmas card? Have I? Okay. The Windsor's as in like King Charles?

Well, his son. Okay. Okay. No, I have not. William and Kate's. The Wales's, I guess. Are the Wales's? I don't think it would be the Wales's. not. William and Kate's, the Waleses, I guess. Are the Waleses? I don't think it would be the Waleses. They're still Windsors, right?

He's the Prince of Wales. I think you call them the Waleses, though. Listeners will know. Okay. Well, they have a Christmas card out, David. Have you seen it? I have not. I'm going to show it to you right now.

We'll put it in the show notes. And as someone pointed out, this looks like a moderately successful political consultant's Christmas card. Very casual, I think is the key here. Tennis shoes for all, shorts for the kids. I've really keyed in on the braided belt on William. Maybe braided belts are back. And again, our Gen Z listeners can let me know,

but at least in my era, past junior high school, braided belts were a real sign that you were a a dork um and there's a raging debate david between the markel harry and megan whether your team harry and megan or your team william and kate and separately for team william and kate whether having a casual christmas card helps modernize the monarchy humanize the monarchy or undermines the monarchy and i find all of these debates fascinating because they don't involve us whatsoever we literally fought a war to not ever think about these people or care what they do and yet the crown is one of the most popular shows in the United States, which is like 20% reality and 80% fiction as best I can tell. It like vaguely takes events that happened, sort of like law and order. Like, yeah, there was something vaguely like that that occurred.

But people seem to feel really strongly which team they're on. And it won't surprise you, David, it seems to roughly fall along political lines in this country that the conservatives are roughly more William and Kate and the progressives are roughly more Harry and Megan. But as I looked at this Christmas card, I was just curious on your humanizing or undermining team humanizing

team humanizing I can't get over the braided belt also Kate's not wearing a belt so presumably she dressed him and why would she pick out a belt for him and for the little one but the little one is George is George the little one I the little one is george is george

the little one i don't know i'm not sure um yeah the little one's wearing a belt anyway do you know i would look at that i could stare at that picture for a thousand years and i would never know that he had a braided belt on maybe i was bullied over my braided belt. Maybe. So it stands out to me. You said there was a second thing. There were two things. Yeah.

So the other problem that I have is that Nate has gotten really into cowboys. He doesn't really know what a cowboy is. I don't think he's ever seen one. And I don't mean in real life. I mean, even in, you know, movies or whatever. But he wanted like cowboy songs. And it needs to mention cowboys, I found out. But I was like, maybe he just wants country music. Anyway, the two songs that he is really into, one, Merle Haggard's Mama Tried. And for those who are not familiar, just this, all you need is this one line to get the whole

flavor of the song. And I turned 21 in prison, doing life without parole. No one could steer me right, but mama tried. Mama tried. I think he just likes the word that mama's in it. But the main song that he likes when he says play cowboy music, mommy, But the main song that he likes when he says, play cowboy music, mommy, is I Should Have Been a Cowboy by Toby Keith. And while I enjoy that song, David, as much as the next gal, I cannot get it out of my head. Day and night, it is sitting there like a little worm replaying over and over again. playing over and over again. So I do need listener advice on upbeat cowboy referencing songs that a two and a half year old could get into that are not I Should Have Been a Cowboy by Toby Keith. And Mama Tried actually is going to get on repeat regardless. So although songs that don't end up with your son in federal prison would be great. There's a genre of country music songs that have

the poor suffering mama theme to them. Definitely. There's a line, I don't even know, I don't even know who sang it, but there's a line that stuck in my mind from like the 80s or 90s. Jesus and mama always loved me, even when the devil took control. Well, this song has something similar. Despite all my Sunday learning towards the bad, I kept on turning till mama couldn't hold me anymore. Yeah, that's classic country music right there. Classic.

All right. Well, this has been a lightning round advisory opinions, which is fine, which is fine. We've had some longer ones. We're going to have some more longer ones. Got a lot of Supreme Court activity coming up in the new year. Not so much in the rest of this year, but certainly in the new year. If you liked this lightning round advisory opinions, please rate us, please subscribe. And also, as always, please check out thedispatch.com. Hey, and you say we're not going to have any more Supreme Court stuff, but this time last year, we could have said that. And then next week, last year,

is when they granted the vaccine mandate oral argument and ruined my Christmas. So don't jinx anything. Yeah, anything can happen, which is why you need to keep tuning in to Advisory Opinions through the rest of the year. And we'll take a quick break to hear from our sponsor today, Aura. Ready to win Mother's Day and cement your reputation as the best gift giver in the family? Give the moms in your life an Aura digital picture frame preloaded with decades of family photos.

She'll love looking back on your childhood memories and seeing what you're up to today. Even better, with unlimited storage and an easy to use app, you can keep updating mom's frame with new photos. So it's the gift that keeps on giving. And to be clear, every mom in my life has this frame. Every mom I've ever heard of has this frame. This is my go to gift. My parents love it. I upload photos all the time. I'm just like bored watching TV at the end of the night. I'll hop on the app and put up the photos from the day. It's really easy. Right now, Aura has a great deal for Mother's Day. Listeners can save on the perfect gift by visiting auraframes.com to get $30 off plus free shipping on their best selling frame. That's auraframes.com. Use code advisory at checkout to save. Terms and conditions

apply.