State Created Danger

rally even dawned, there was violence. There was violence at rallies all over the country in the months leading up to August twelfth, violence encouraged by and at the hands of the men who were busy organizing the event that would cap off what they called the Summer of hate. And when the day finally came, the violence they'd been promising to deliver all summer left blood in our streets, but not a single speech was made that day. Fights broke out in the streets as rallygoers arrived at the park.

Police watched and waited as neo Nazis who'd taken cross country flights looking for a fight, hunched, kicked, bludgeoned, and, in at least one instance, choked, counter protesters who stood in their way. The rally itself never even really happened. Police dispersed the crowd before it ever really got started, and it had already been over for hours when one man who'd hoped to attend it took his revenge on the counter demonstrators, murdering heather Hire and injuring dozens of others.

And I'll tell you some of those stories one of these days. There were a handful of criminal prosecutions, and I spent years sitting quietly on a wooden bench, watching and dutifully taking notes. But those cases, for the most part, were pretty open and shut, and they were resolved fairly quickly by the standards of the court.

When I realized it was a longer and more complicated narrative than I felt like I could get my arms around this week, so I set it aside and started scrambling at the eleventh hour for something I thought I could pull together quickly, something I already know a lot about and won't lose myself for days trying to do a lot of new research. But then I saw a

blog post from an attorney, Glenn Keith. Allen is a man whose story should be told on its own, and I think I will eventually, So I won't tell you more than you need to know here. I'm very comfortable

describing him as a neo Nazi lawyer. That's what the Southern Poverty Law Center called him in a headline of an article published in twenty sixteen, when they revealed that the attorney working for the Baltimore Police Department had been a dues paying member of the neo Nazi group National Alliance for decades.

SPLC for defamation. In the memorandum dismissing his suit, the judge notes that not only had Allan failed to show there was any falsehood in the claims that had been made by the SBLC, he didn't even appear to be disputing the claim that he was in fact a neo Nazi.

white supremacist publications American Renaissance and v DARE. He was hired by Nathan Dimigo, the former leader of the neo Nazi group Identity Europa, in his ongoing effort to use a bankruptcy case to evade paying damages to the victims of the United's Right Rally. Allan has also filed petitions to the Supreme Court on behalf of members of the neo Nazi street fighting gang, the Rise Above movement. And

then there's the case I'm talking about today. Last week, Glenn Allen posted an update to his website to share some sad news. He wrote, on April seventh, twenty twenty five, the Supreme Court denied our petition. The Court's decision, although not surprising, is regrettable. The Court missed an opportunity to advance the cause of First Amendment protection for unpopular speech and to admonishi the City of Charlottesville for taking sides

against Warren and the other pro monument protesters. The cases talking about was originally filed by Gregory Conti and Warren

Baylaw in twenty nineteen. Both men had attended the United Right rally in Charlesville, Virginia, on August twelfth, twenty seventeen, and felt their civil rights had been violated by various parties then named as defendants in their lawsuit, the Commonwealth of Virginia, the City of Charlesville, the Virginia State Police, then Governor of Virginia Terry mccauliffe, the Charlesville Police Department, several individual members of both police agencies and city staff,

as well as the sort of random assortment of individual counter protesters. Now I realize as I'm writing this that as continuously present as the events of summer twenty seventeen have felt here in Charlottesville, I was eight years ago. It was national news back then, but it's likely faded from the memories of people everywhere else. And if you're too young to have been watching the news eight years ago, you might never even have known enough to forget. The

rally was, on its surface about Confederate statues. Back in twenty seventeen, that was a pretty hot issue. Granted, a lot of people had been voicing opposition to the presence of those monuments to racism for a century or so since they'd been put up, but it became a subject of national concern in twenty fifteen after the Charleston church shooting. Cities around the country were starting to talk about taking

them down, and many did. But here in Virginia, a state law stood in the way of local decision making on the subject. Local governments needed state permission to take down a monument or a memorial to any war. The law even species hifically prohibited quote the placement of Union

markings or monuments on previously designated Confederate memorials. But a court ruling in late twenty fifteen seemed to hint that perhaps the law could be interpreted to mean that it only applied to statues erected after that law was passed, which could mean it didn't apply to Charlottesville. That legal battle lasted years, and it probably isn't interesting to normal people,

so I won't get into it. But what you need to know here is that in twenty sixteen, the city of Charlottesville was starting to take real steps toward trying to take down the statues of Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson, and some people were very, very angry about it. At the end of May twenty seventeen, a local resident named Jason Kessler filed an application with the City of Charlesville for a special event permit. He wanted to hold an event on August twelfth, twenty seventeen, in the park

where the Roberty Lee statue stood. He described the event as a free speech rally in support of the Lee monument, and on his application he estimated that about four hundred people would attend, but it wasn't about the statues, not really not. In the end, this statue was a focal point, a rallying cry, a lightning rod. Whatever it was, an excuse, it was a breaking point. The men who descended on this little college town were here to put black people

in their place. They were here to fight the Jewish agenda. They were here to fist fight Antifa. They were here to kill communists. Sure a lot of them were proud of their Southern heritage, I guess, but that doesn't really help explain the swastika tattoos, does it. Where the months of messages exchanged, and a discord server where attendees gleefully discussed their fantasies about killing counter protesters.

downtown were packed with counter protesters. At the very last minute that morning, the event organizer, who'd been the group's police liaison, backed of the agreed upon plan to have the scheduled speakers shuttled into the park with a police escort, and within an hour of that decision, all hell had broken loose in the streets near the park. By eleven thirty am, the local police had declared the gathering and unlawful assembly. State police and riot years showed up a

few minutes later to clear the park by force. One of the only funny pictures taken that day shows Richard Spencer's mid tantrum as he's being shoved out of the park by a line of riot cops. There's a lot to be said about the months leading up to that day in August. Much of it has already been said, and some of it I'm sure I'll write some other day, but today, just in case you don't remember, the summer

of twenty seventeen. That'll do, because the facts at issue in that lawsuit are here at the entrance to the park between about nine thirty am in noon. The plaintiffs in this lawsuit, Gregory Kanti and Warren Baylaw, are Nazis. People throw that word around a lot, so I'll let you hear it from them. Here's Warren on his own podcast explaining to his wife that they have a responsibility to spread Hitler's message.

a National Alliance before Warren was even born. As for Greg Conti, he was coaching field hockey at a Catholic girls' school in Maryland before he was fired when the school he was Richard Spencer's lackey. In twenty twenty, both Allan and Warren Baylaw and Greg Conti were founding members of a now defunct neo Nazi organization called the National Justice Party. And in twenty seventeen, Warren Baylaw and Gregory Kanti were inside the park when the Virginia State Police showed up

a riot year to enforce that dispersal order. Daniel Schular, a photojournalist taking pictures that day for the Tulsa World, captured an image that shows both men right up against the riot.

their Fourteenth Amendment right to equal protection. There are some other more bizarre claims involving wild allegations of a criminal conspiracy between Antifa and the government actors, but those rico allegations aren't really worth getting into. It's very silly stuff.

The underlying idea, quoting from the suit, defendants intentionally encouraged and facilitated mob violence by counter protesters against lawful Unite the Right demonstrators, creating a civil disturbance as a pretext to disperse the demonstrators before the Unite the Right rally began. So they're saying that police didn't just let counter protesters interfere with the rally. They're saying they think police set that up so they'd have an excuse to then crack down on the Nazis.

Right demonstrators would go unpunished. Predictably, and as defendants intended, counter protesters attacked and assaulted United the Right demonstrators, and the defendants used those violent attacks against lawful demonstrators as a pretext to disperse the entire gathering. I mean, citation needed for most of that. But here's the thing. No one disputes that the police fucked up. The city admits it. The police kind of admitted it. The independent review flawed

as it was found that to be the case. Protesters and counter protesters alike were dumbfounded by the complete and total inaction of the police who just stood there and watched as the violence unfolded. People with blood running down their faces were screaming at the police to do something, anything, and they really did just stand there. That's not in dispute. The legal question here is not did they do that? But can they do that? And the answer is unequivocally yes,

yes they can. There isn't a law on the books or a decision in the case law that says they have to do a goddamn thing to help you. There are a disturbing number of cases bearing this out. There are cases in state courts like Loziito versus New York City. In February of twenty eleven, the NYPD was on a

manhunt for a man on a stabbing spree. He'd already stabbed several people to death when he bore the train that morning, Acting on a tip that the serial stabber had been spotted on the subway platform, boarded the same train. They saw the man they were looking for and recognized him, but they would later say they thought he had a gun. Now again, he'd been on a stabbing spree for twenty four hours. Do you think if he had a gun, he might have I don't know, shot anyone prior to

this moment rather than stabbing them all to death. But they say they thought he had a gun. So they locked themselves in the conductor's car and just watched through the window as their suspect brutally stabbed a man on the train repeatedly in the head, just a few feet away from where they were standing, but the victim fought back.

Joseph Lozito managed to pin his assailant to the ground before losing consciousness from blood loss, and it was only after Lozito had disarmed and subdued his own attacker that the police felt safe enough to come out and make the arrest. But his lawsuit was dismissed. The judge acknowledged that the attack was shocking and horrific, but quote, the law is abundantly clear that no liability flows from negligence and the performance of a police function unless there is

a special relationship. If you're not in their custody, you aren't their problem. That example lives large in my mind because it's just so immediate and clear cut, Like I can imagine them with their little faces pressed up against the train window, just watching this happen because they're afraid. But that's a New York State court case, so it's not really binding here. But here are some that are.

her estranged husband. He was not allowed near her or her home, and he was only allowed limited contact with their daughters. But one afternoon in nineteen ninety nine, he kidnapped their three daughters. Jessica called the police. The officers who responded to her call told her there was nothing they could do about the restraining order, and they suggested that her husband would probably bring the girls home later

in the evening. And she should just wait and if the girls weren't back by ten pm, she could call them again. Around eight thirty, she managed to get a hold of her husband on the phone, and he told her he had the girls at an amusement park in a neighboring city. So she called the police again and told them where he was and asked them to put out an all points bulletin for the area with his license plate number. They refused, and they told her again,

just wait till ten pm. They'll be home. She called again at ten pm and they told her this time to wait until midnight, So she went to her husband's apartment on her own and found nothing. She called the police again at midnight. Finally she went to the police station herself to try to talk to somebody in person, and nobody cared. They just weren't interested in trying to find her children or their father. But he found them. At three am, Jessica Gonzalez's a strange husband showed up

at the police station with a gun. He'd purchased that gun earlier that same evening, sometime after he abducted his daughters, and certainly before he used it to murder them. After police shot him dead inside the police station. They found the girl's bodies outside in his truck.

Court in nineteen eighty nine. This one doesn't actually involve the police specifically, but it cited repeatedly in the lawsuits we're talking about because it held that a government agency, any government agency, although in this case it's the Department of Social Services, has no affirmative duty to protect anyone from any kind of harm that the government itself had not created. Joshua D. Shaney was a four year old boy whose father beat him so badly he was left

in a coma. And this was after Social services had ignored reports of abuse for a year. When Joshua's stepmother went to the police to report seeing the boy's father hit him, they brushed her off and referred her to social services, and so she made the report to Social services. Neighbors seeing and hearing the toddler being beaten, and the

police sent them to social services. The boy was seen in the emergency room three separate times, and doctors reported seeing the signs of abuse to Social services all three times. After the first hospital visit, the boy was briefly removed from the home, but the state agency quickly returned him to the custody of his abuser. A caseworker visited the home at least twenty times, and her notes show that she saw and documented signs of abuse, but no one

did anything. After Joshua was put into a coma by his father's abuse, that social worker said, I just knew the phone would ring some day and Joshua would be dead, but she didn't do anything. The court ruled that only Joshua's father could be held liable for the abuse, that there was no liability for the state agency that repeatedly

returned the child to the custody of his abuser. Further, the opinion says the state's failure to protect an individual against private violence simply does not constitute a violation of the due process claus The The Shainey case is cited again and again in cases attempting to hold the police or any government agency accountable or standing by and letting

people get hurt. Because the state is not required to help you, they can't be held liable for anything that happens to you simply because they actively chose not to intervene. The only real exception to that rule are if you are in state custody or if the dangerous situation was created by that state actor. There are a nauseating number of cases establishing the parameters here, but I'll just give

you one more. Kantie and Baila filed their suit in Virginia, so when it was dismissed, they appealed it to the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, And there is a Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals case that flushes out their interpretation of Toshaney. A nineteen ninety five opinion in the case of Carol Pinder the officer Donald Johnson. In nineteen eighty nine,

Carol Pinder called the police. Her abusive ex boyfriend, Don Pittman had broken into her home and he was punching her and breaking things and threatening to kill her and her children. The officer who responded to her call took Pittman into custody and assured Carol Pinder that he would be locked up overnight until he could be brought before a judge in the morning. She specifically asked she was concerned about going to work that evening because Pittman had

threatened her before. He'd actually only just been released from jail. He'd been convicted of attempt at arson for trying to set her house on fire just ten months earlier. The officer specifically told Carol Pinder that Pittman would be in jail all night and that she wouldn't be able to file her complaint until tomorrow morning anyway, so she went

to work. She went to work that evening because the officer promised her that this man would be in jail until tomorrow morning, when she could speak to the judge. But Pittman was released within hours, and while she was at work that evening, Pittman set Carol Pinder's house on fire, just like he promised. He would do just like he'd

done once before, and her three children were inside. All three of those children died in the fire, and that fire was set just eighteen days after the Supreme Court decided the Toshaney case, and the Fourth Circuit cites to Shaney throughout their opinion. In Pinder, there are only two situations where the police officer would have any affirmative duty to protect anyone. One is if there is a custodial relationship. If you are in their custody, they're a little bit

responsible for your safety. So if Carol Pinder had been, for instance, in the county jail, the police would be responsible if her ex murdered her. But making a promise to Carol Pinder meant nothing. Promises aren't legally binding. Again from the opinion quote, state actors may not disclaim liability when they themselves throw others to the lions. They do not, by contrast, in title persons who rely on pises of aid to some greater degree of protection from lions at large.

And that's the second exception from the Dushaney case. Right, they can't throw you to the lions, meaning they can't create circumstances that directly cause harm to come to you at the hands of someone else, and that's what's called the state created danger doctrine. On that front, the Fourth Circuit is pretty clear. They wrote in twenty nineteen that they've never written in an opinion recognizing the validity of

such a claim. It's a very high bar to clear in the opinion of the Fourth Circuit, so high in fact, that despite their claim that they believe it is a valid hypothetical legal idea, it's never actually happened in the Fourth Circuit. There are examples in other jurisdictions, but honestly, reading these examples, I don't understand why the police in these cases are more liable than in some cases. Is where the court found that they weren't. There are several

cases involving people who were very intoxicated. So in one case, someone was pulled over while driving drunk, and the officer took the driver, who was intoxicated, into custody and they took his keys, but the female passenger in the car, who was not drunk, was not allowed to have the keys to drive herself home. They just left her on the side of the road and she was subsequently raped and she was able to successfully sue those police officers,

saying they were responsible for this state created danger. She would not have been there alone on the side of the road with no transportation if the police had not arrested the driver of the vehicle for being intoxicated and

left her without a way to get home. There was another case where police responded to a dispute at a bar and they threw one man out, took away his key so that he couldn't drive home, and they wouldn't let him back in, so he couldn't drive home, and he couldn't come inside, and they didn't offer to take him home. So he's just out there in the cold at night in jeans and a T shirt, and he

did eventually die of hypothermia. And in that case, too, the police were found to be responsible for having created the dangerous circumstances in which harm came to him. So it does happen. I'm not saying it's never happened. I'm just saying the Fourth Circuit says they've never seen it. All the cases the Fourth Circuit recognizes where a state actor can be said to have had an affirmative duty to anyone were cases where the injured party was in

police custody. A Fourth Circuit ruling in dove Rosa in twenty fifteen further clarified their view of what constitutes state created danger. Quote, the state, through its affirmative acts, must itself create the dangerous situation that resulted in the victim's injury. No constitutional liability exists where the state actors had no hand in creating the danger, but simply stood by and did nothing when suspicious circumstances dictated a more active role

for them. So deliberate indifference, just standing there and watching harm come to someone and choosing to do nothing, that doesn't rise to the level of actively creating the harmful circumstance. Because doing nothing isn't doing something. Doing nothing is not an action, So the act of doing nothing does not constitute the affirmative step of taking an action. That sounds like meaningless circular reasoning, but I promise you that comes

back again. The act of doing nothing is not legally an action at all, And that probably feels like a lot of extraneous detail. But all of this has been to say that anyone filing a lawsuit anywhere in the United States is going to face a steep uphill battle if they're trying to prove that the government had any response. It's ability to prevent harm caused by a non state actor. The state can't violate your right to free speech, but

they don't have to help you speak. The state can't burn your house down, but they don't have to stop your ex from doing it. The state can't deny you the right to hold your demonstration, but they can just stand there and watch as the situation becomes too unsafe to allow it to continue. And that legal battle would be even steeper here in the Fourth Circuit, where the

Rosa and Pinder cases were decided. The Fourth Circuit does not believe that it is possible for the state actor to be responsible for any dangerous situation unless the injured party was already in their custody. And by the time greg Contein warren Bylaw filed this suit in twenty nineteen, they had every reason to know it was a waste

of time. They may not have been familiar with the case law, and they didn't have the money to hire an attorney, but they did ask a friend who is a lawyer to ghost write their complaint, and they surely knew that other lawsuits making the exact same claims about the exact same events had already been dismissed by the same court. Kanti and bylaw filed their suit pro say, meaning without a lawyer, and prose litigans are given a lot of leeway by the court because they don't have

a lawyer's help. Their filings are interpreted much more charitably, but they aren't allowed to secretly have a lawyer who helps them in order to have it both ways, to both have legal counsel and be afforded the leniency granted to those who don't. Technically, though, you can get a lawyer to ghost write your lawsuit and then just sort

of proceed from there. It's not preferred. Some jurisdictions require you to disclose it, and most would prefer it, but the ethics committees in many jurisdictions have said, yeah, yeah, you can do this. And because Kanti and Beylaw accidentally filed their lawsuit in the wrong jurisdiction, they originally filed their suit in a district whose local rules do require you to submit a signed form disclosing that you had

a ghostwriter. So I know that they asked their friend Augustus Sole Invictus to draft this complaint, which again they then filed in the wrong jurisdiction. In addition to being an attorney, Augustus Invictus was a scheduled speaker at the United the Right rally, and he's had some legal troubles

of his own in the years since. Who's recently convicted of a felony for intimidating a group of college students as part of a mob of torch wielding white supremacists, But more relevant to the story at hand, After drafting that complaint for Beilan Kanti back in twenty nineteen, he was wasn't really very available to keep helping them out. He was arrested in December of twenty nineteen for allegedly abducting his wife at gunpoint because she was trying to

leave him. According to her own sworn statements in later proceedings, she was coerced into not testifying at trial, so he was never convicted on those charges. But at the time, back in early twenty twenty, he was pretty preoccupied with his own problems, so Kanti and Baila were kind of on their own and it was truly a hopeless case. By early twenty twenty, when it came time for the pair to try to write some motions in their case, the same court that would be reading those motions had

already dismissed four separate lawsuits making the same argument. Well, four lawsuits, I guess were two in some change, because one of those plaintiffs kept rears changing his claim, and he filed three separate, slightly different cases. But the first lawsuit brought before the federal court in the Western District of Virginia that claimed that the police violated people's rights by allowing the violence is the only one of those

cases that was filed by a counter protester. Robert Turner was protesting the Nazi rally when he was pepper sprayed and physically assaulted while police just stood there and watched. Turner's lawyer seems to have been at least marginally more competent than either Jason Kessler or Warren Baylaw's lawyers, so he did come prepared to make an argument for state created danger, alleging there had been a stand down order

given to all police on sen ahead of time. It is alleged in the suit, and to some degree widely believed in the community, that the officers had been instructed ahead of time to do nothing, to just let the violence happen. And that's a controversial theory. Does it feel true?

time he said it, it's already what was happening. Whether that was the plan or not, there are scores of eyewitness accounts, sworn statements, police after action interviews, and video from police body cameras that prove that officers were unwilling to act. We don't know why people approached lines of cops begging them for help, and the officers just stood

there in silence. Other officers curtly answered that they would intervene if and when commanded to do so, but they wouldn't say what it would take for that command to happen. Some officers reported being uncertain about what they were expected to do or unwilling to risk their safety in a volatile situation. Some of the police department employees whod been deployed to hold intersections where the roads had been closed weren't even sworn police officers, so they didn't carry weapons.

Whether this impacts how you feel about it or not, the fact is a lot of them were scared. Whether or not an actual standdown order had been issued that morning was, according to Turner's lawsuit, an issue of fact that could be determined a trial, But in alleging it, they sought to establish something important. If true, Their argument

is that this constitute's state created danger. The dangerous situation was the direct result of an order given by the police chief, an order that was then carried out by the police officers that sounds like it could pass the test right. The police directly contributed to the danger by following the order to stand down. But that's not how

the court felt. In the original opinion dismissing Turner's case, Judge Norman Moon wrote, the incident in terms of a standdown order is nothing more than an artful re characterization of inaction as action, and the Fourth Circuit agreed with him on appeal. The law has clearly established that in action is not enough. Now they're clarifying that the act of ordering in action ahead of time doesn't count as taking in action at all. That's still just in action.

much the same throughout. Instead of trying to argue that what happened does meet the legal standard under Dashenyan Pinder just don't mention it at all and hope no one else does either, And so instead he relies on an argument about the Heckler's veto, which is the situation that's created where the state infringes on someone's free speech because their speech is potentially very unpopular and they're worried that

there will be counter protesting that becomes disruptive. So in order to prevent a disruption by people who oppose the speaker, they simply prevent the speaker from speaking, And of course they can't do that, right. The city couldn't have legally denied him the permit just because they were worried the counter protest might turn violent. They tried to do that, and a federal court issued an injunction and gave him

the permit back. So that's not what happened. He had the permit, and it also would have been a violation of his rights and the rights of the other attendees at his Nazi rally if the police had responded to the disorder by merely removing them from the area, if only they were made to leave and everyone else was allowed to stay. Kessler suits alleged that the declaration of the unlawful assembly was discriminatory because it was motivated by the content of the speech at the rally. So he's

saying that only rally attendees were made to leave the park. Well, only rally attendees were inside the park, and the park was cleared. It was a very violent, but viewpoint neutral barrage of pepper spray. So I won't say nobody's rights got violated. I think some people's rights got a little violated. But jas Sain Kessler failed to convince the court in three separate lawsuits and one appeal that his First Amendment

rights were infringed upon in this particular way. The opinion from the appeals court is brief, noting succinctly that the rally goers were engaged in violence prior to the dispersal order and quote. Kessler's complaint lacks any plausible allegation that the unlawful assembly declaration and the dispersal order discriminated based on content, So everybody had to leave.

obligation to prevent that public hostility. I mean, for God's sake, If the law says the police don't have to do anything to stop three children from dying in a house fire, even if they promised those children's mother that they wouldn't let the man who'd previously set their house on fire out of jail after he threatened to set their house on fire again, then why would that same law entitle you to proactive police protection to give Nazi salutes in

a public park. There is no constitutional right to police protection from getting heckled. You can't sue the city because everyone hated your Nazi rally. You very well could have had your Nazi rally if the guys you invited to the Nazi rally hadn't started brutalizing members of the clergy in the middle of the goddamn street before it even started.

But now I'm editorializing so by the time Greg Kantian Warren Baylaw file their version of this same suit, Robert Turner's suit has already been not only dismissed, but the dismissal was upheld on appeal. Again, that's the only one of these suits that was brought by a counter protest or, so the court is being I guess you could say fair. That doesn't feel right, but the court is saying that the cops are allowed to watch everybody get their ass

beat in the streets. It's content neutral. And Jason Kessler has had two suits dismissed already, and he filed his third lawsuit the same day that Kanti and Baylaw filed THEIRS, because it was the last day under the statute of

limitations to file anything related to that day. But Kanti and BiLaw accidentally filed THEIRS in the wrong jurisdiction, so by the time it gets transferred to the right court almost a year later, Kessler's third and final lawsuit has already been torn to shreds and it's been dismissed.

When the Fourth Circuit finally upheld the dismissal laws lawsuit in twenty twenty four, the opinion takes the case point by point. You don't always get that in an appellate decision, but I guess they just wanted to make things abundantly clear because these guys were obviously having trouble understanding the rulings. It's actually kind of brutal in that detached, icy way

that legal professionals sometimes eviscerate each other. I'll put it in the show notes, but i won't get too deep into it, because I'm willing to admit that not everyone is going to find it as exciting as I did. The opinion opens with a question. This appeal asks a straightforward legal question, does the First Amendment protect speech amid violence? More specifically, does the First Amendment obligate police officers to

protect the constitutional rights of protesters amid violence. We've already suggested that the answer is no, and the citation they give for this is their own prior ruling in Jason Kessler's lawsuit, which makes the same arguments about the same facts.

And the opinion continues Warren Baylaw asks that we hold otherwise, and after a brief summary of the facts in the case, the opinion reads, maylaw would have us seize on these facts to transform the First Amendment from a shield to guard against invasive speech regulations into a sword to wield against violent speech disruptions. We declined to forge such a weapon. Glen Allen was still representing We're in baylaw when they tried to get this case in front of the Supreme

Court earlier this year. And I know that Glen Allen knows that the police don't have an affirmative duty to protect anyone, because until he got fired for being a neo Nazi, he was working as a defense attorney representing the Baltimore Police Department. So I have to imagine working for a notoriously brutal and corrupt police department in the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, I have to imagine he was familiar with cases liked Shaneyy Whin a Bagehope in

der Vy Johnson, and Castle Rockvey Gonzalez. But he pretends not to be writing This breaks perhaps the most fundamental pact citizens have with their government. We grant a monopoly on violence to the sovereign in exchange for which it assumes the duty to provide basic protection to life and limb. Once that duty is wilfully abandoned, there is no telling where the trouble ends. Well, Glen, I have some shocking

news for you that pact has been broken. There is no pact that the state will protect your life and limb. What he's saying is that his client is the victim. All the men in that park were just innocently expressing their First Amendment rights and I didn't want to hurt anyone. They trusted that if someone needed to be hurt, the government would do it for them.

Nazia bone just for fun. I could see why they'd be hopeful, but even the most optimistic fascist surely understands that as much as the current administration might enjoy their willingness to fight the race war, there's just no political utility in upsetting the settled case law that keeps cops safe from having to do the thing we all like to imagine, therefore.

finished his rambling substack posts with this message. Lastly, I would like to thank every last man and woman who attended the United the Right rally on August eleven and twelfth, twenty seventeen. This lawsuit was a symbolic fight for all the young men who sacrificed more at Charlesville than I did, All those who spent years in prison, who had their careers and reputations destroyed, who ended their own lives, who still have the threat of imprisonment hanging over their heads.

For all their sakes, it was worth it. Just days after the United the Right rally, all the way back in August of twenty seventeen, Beyla wrote an essay for Richard Spencer's alright dot com.

for my own website, and for podcasts. I've live tweeted a month long trial, and I still don't really know the answer. This may be the only thing the court has been one hundred percent clear and consistent on. You absolutely do not have any right to expect a cop to help you if he doesn't feel like it, not even if he promised, not even if it would be easy for him to do it, not even if it

would save your life. It's not a violation of anyone's rights for a public servant to stand completely still and watch you die. It's a little bit funny to see crime. Maybe Nazis sending themselves into hysterics insisting that they have a constitutional right to see Kyle in the park with police protection. They're not entitled to that protection, but neither are you. Neither were my neighbors who were beaten in the streets. Neither were Jessica Gonzalez's daughters or Carol Pinder's children.

The police have absolutely no duty to protect us. They have plenty of power to hurt us, and they're well within the bounds of the law to passively create conditions where neo Nazis are free to hurt us with impunity. They may have no duty to us, but please try to remember we all have a duty to each other, so be good to your neighbors and keep each other safe. Weird Little Guys the same production of Pool Zone Media and iHeartRadio. It's research, written and recorded by me, Molly Conger.

Our executive producers are Sophie Lichterman and Robert Evans. The show is edited by the wildly talented Mary Gigan. The theme music was composed by Brad Dickert. You can email me at Weird Little Guys podcast at gmail dot com. I will definitely read it, but I probably won't answer it. It's nothing personal. I don't answer any of my emails. You can exchange conspiracy theories about the show with other

listeners on the Weird Little Guys supreddit. Just don't most anything that's going to make you on my words, Little Guys