Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by paulnechifor 2123 days ago
What does this have to do with speech? And yes, the courts can compel you to do something you don't like. That's what the law is.

If you steal an candy bar, the government can "compel speech" in the form of forcing you to return the stolen property.

1 comments

> If you steal an candy bar, the government can "compel speech" in the form of forcing you to return the stolen property.

This is a great example of a thing that is not remotely 'compelled speech.' Here's the wiki article on the topic[1]. There's a pretty high bar for the government to create exceptions to the First Amendment.

A better example of compelled speech is the FBI trying to require Apple to write software that would give police a backdoor into any iPhone user's phone[2].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compelled_speech#United_States

[2] https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2016/03/what-we-talk-about-whe...