Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by ABeeSea 1179 days ago
That’s just being pedantic. The constitution explicitly bans bills of attainder so any law targeting a specific person or company will be struck down.
2 comments

> The constitution explicitly bans bills of attainder so any law targeting a specific person or company will be struck down.

The law must be both specific and punitive to be a bill of attainder. A law can nonpunitively regulate a “class of one” without being a Bill of Attainder. See, Nixon v. Administrator of General Services, 433 U.S. 425 (1977). [0] So, it is not quite accurate that “any law targeting a specific person or company will be struck down”.

OTOH, a “TikTok ban” based on asserted prior misconduct would pretty surely be seen as punitive.

[0] https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/433/425

Not necessarily. Only if the Supreme Court hears the case and agrees.
Lower courts can rule on it and provide injunctions. If it is appealed and the Supreme Court hears it, then it matters if they agree or not.