Supreme Court sidesteps challenge to internet companies’ broad protections from lawsuits
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court on Thursday sidestepped a case against Google that might have allowed more lawsuits against social media companies.
The justices’ decision returns to a lower court the case of a family of an American college student who was killed in an Islamic State terrorist attack in Paris. The family wants to sue Google for YouTube videos they said helped attract IS recruits and radicalize them. Google owns YouTube.
Google claims immunity from the lawsuit under a 1996 law that generally shields social media company for content posted by others. Lower courts agreed with Google.
The justices had agreed to consider whether the legal shield is too broad. But in arguments in February, several sounded reluctant to weigh in now.
In an unsigned opinion Thursday, the court wrote that it was declining to address the law at issue.
The outcome is, at least for now, a victory for the tech industry, which predicted havoc on the internet if Google lost. But the high court remains free to take up the issue in a later case.
The court also ruled in a separate lawsuit involving Google, Twitter and Facebook, heard on the same day in February, that seeks to hold them liable for a terrorist attack in a Turkish nightclub that killed 39 people.
A lower court allowed the suit to proceed under a law against aiding and abetting terrorism.
The justices’ unanimously ruled that case could not go forward.
Andy Warhol violated a photographer’s copyright on image of Prince, Supreme Court rules
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court on Thursday ruled in favor of a photographer who claimed the late Andy Warhol had violated her copyright on a photograph of the singer Prince.
“Lynn Goldsmith’s original works, like those of other photographers, are entitled to copyright protection, even against famous artists,” Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote in an opinion joined by six of her colleagues.
The case involved images Warhol created of Prince as part of a 1984 commission for Vanity Fair. Warhol used one of Goldsmith’s photos as a starting point, a so-called artist reference, and Vanity Fair paid Goldsmith to license the photo. Warhol then created a series of images in his signature style.
Vanity Fair chose one of the images — Prince with a purple face — to run in the magazine. The magazine ran another image from the series on its cover following Prince’s 2016 death. It was that second use that the justices dealt with in the case.
Lawyers for Warhol’s foundation had argued that the artist had transformed the photograph and there was no violation of copyright law. But a majority of the justices said a lower court had correctly sided with Goldsmith.
Some amount of copying is acceptable under copyright law as “fair use.” To determine whether something counts as fair use, courts look to four factors set out in the federal Copyright Act of 1976. A lower court found that all four factors favored Goldsmith. Only the first factor was at issue in the Supreme Court case and Sotomayor wrote that: “The first factor favors Goldsmith.”
U.S. Supreme Court sides with Alabama inmate who seeks to die by nitrogen hypoxia
MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) — The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday sided with an Alabama death row inmate, who had his lethal injection called off at the last minute in November, and argues he should be put to death by nitrogen hypoxia when he is ultimately executed.
Justices without comment rejected the Alabama attorney general’s request to review an 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals decision regarding inmate Kenneth Eugene Smith. The state argued the decision disregarded Supreme Court precedent that an inmate challenging an execution method must show that an alternative method is readily available, not just feasible.
Alabama has authorized nitrogen hypoxia — death as a result of breathing pure nitrogen — as an execution method but no state has attempted to use the untested method to put an inmate to death.
Smith was scheduled to be put to death by lethal injection on Nov. 17, 2022, for the 1988 murder-for-hire slaying of a preacher’s wife.
On the day of the execution, a divided 11th Circuit panel stayed the execution after Smith raised concerns about previous lethal injections in the state and suggested nitrogen hypoxia as an available alternative method. The Supreme Court disagreed and lifted the stay. However, prison officials ended up calling off Smith’s execution for the night after staff were unable to find a suitable vein to connect the second of two intravenous lines to Smith’s body.
Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito dissented from the Supreme Court’s opinion, saying they would hear the case.
“The Eleventh Circuit’s error is not only plain but also serious enough to warrant correction,” Thomas wrote in a dissent.
Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey in November announced a pause in executions to conduct an internal review of procedures. The review came after problems with intravenous lines caused multiple executions to be canceled or delayed. The state is seeking to resume executions this summer.
Attorneys for Smith have claimed his November execution attempt was botched. Smith has an ongoing lawsuit seeking to prevent the state from making a second attempt to execute him by lethal injection.
“To subject Mr. Smith to a second execution by lethal injection would subject him to a torturous experience of unnecessary physical and psychological pain, as has been established through Alabama’s last three execution attempts,” Smith’s lawyers wrote in a December court filing.
Prosecutors said Smith was one of two men who were each paid $1,000 to kill Elizabeth Sennett on behalf of her husband, who was deeply in debt and wanted to collect on insurance. The slaying, and the revelations over who was behind it, rocked the small north Alabama community.
