SCOTUS – Blog

In 1718, decades before the Founding Fathers quarreled over State’s rights versus Federal rights, Blackbeard’s infamous Queen Anne’s Revenge ran aground off the coast of Beaufort, North Carolina. Nearly 300 years later, the Supreme Court of the United States unanimously ruled that all States enjoy sovereign immunity from copyright lawsuits. In June 2019, we published a blog post detailing the lawsuit between Nautilus Productions, LLC (“Nautilus”) and the State of North Carolina. When the wreckage of Queen Anne’s Revenge was discovered in 1996, Intersal, Inc. (“Intersal”), a private research and salvage company, conducted the exploration and recovery of the ship’s artifacts. Interstal hired Nautilus to document its efforts over the…

The intersection of free speech and safety on social media has been a hotly debated topic for many years. Because cyber-bullying takes many different forms, it is difficult to define. While several states criminalize cyber-bullying, the language of these statutes vary greatly and are just recently being challenged under First Amendment grounds. In June, the North Carolina Court of Appeals upheld the state’s cyber-bullying statute over a First Amendment challenge.[1] This decision is noteworthy because it contrasts a 2014 New York Court of Appeals decision striking down an Albany County cyber-bullying statute.[2] While the statutory language of these cyber-bullying statutes differ to some degree, the respective state…