Less than 24 hours after Attorney General Pam Bondi attempted to make the case that the First Amendment has a carve-out that makes “hate speech” subject to prosecution, Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor took a not-too-veiled shot at the Donald Trump appointee.
According to a report from Politico, with the next Supreme Court term just around the corner at the beginning of October, Sotomayor took the stage Tuesday morning for questions on a panel hosted by New York Law School.
Late Monday, Bondi told podcaster Katie Miller, the wife of extreme rightwing Donald Trump adviser Stephen Miller, “There’s free speech and then there’s hate speech, and there is no place, especially now, especially after what happened to Charlie [Kirk], in our society."
She added, "We will absolutely target you, go after you, if you are targeting anyone with hate speech — and that’s across the aisle.”
As Politico’s Erica Orden wrote, the Yale Law School-trained Sotomayor never mentioned Bondi by name, but it was clear who she was talking about.
“Every time I listen to a lawyer-trained representative saying we should criminalize free speech in some way, I think to myself, that law school failed,” Sotomayor pointed out.
Bondi is a graduate of Stetson University College of Law in Deland, Florida, which is housed in a historic 1920s resort hotel.
Stomayor later added, “Think about all the things that you see in the world that are wrong, starting with two world wars — two wars and regional conflicts. But think of everything that’s happening in the United States, and you have to pause and say, we adults have really messed this up.”
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