Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2020/08/18/judge-orders-critics-of-cop-no.html
…
6 Likes
Not a very effective gag order. Sure, the few people he is suing must remain quiet. The story of the order itself will be on thousands more blogs than the case itself would have been.
22 Likes
It would be a shame for Ryan Olthaus, if Ryan Olthaus was mentioned by name in hundreds of posts like this one with his white supremacist afflications and Ryan Olthaus had a hard time scrubbing search engine associations…Ryan Olthaus. 
23 Likes
This was my first reaction:
8 Likes
He seems nice.
4 Likes
Paging Saint Babs!
8 Likes
At what point does the judge’s conduct come into question?
If any second-year law student could shoot this down in three minutes or less, what does it say about the judge who authorized it?
Can the judge be removed for being clearly incompetent?
At the very least, there should be a motion from the defense to have the judge recuse themself because they are clearly biased in favor of the plaintiff.
12 Likes
Possibly. It may take years of concerted effort. And if they’re elected again then we’d have to go through the same song and dance all over again.
Just look at that bastard roy moore.
6 Likes
Gag orders can be infuriating. I ran into one when I got sued. The plaintiff had illegally obtained confidential information from me that my lawyer uncovered during discovery. They got a gag order preventing him from telling me (I found out anyways). It was especially infuriating because they were claiming I’d stolen information from them (I hadn’t) in order to pressure me into giving them IP.
5 Likes
Most likely that they are horrendously overworked and underressourced and signed off on a bad order which probably made perfect sense to them at the time.
Fairly clearly given the other filings, this order was meant to prevent doxxing - but how do you draft a legally effective order to that end especially if you are a lawyer and not some internet hotshot?
What is doxxing? It’s publishing someone’s personally identifying information online. Hey presto, that’s what this order prevents.
It also arguably does a lot more than that.
This is why both parties should be present or represented at all hearings.
3 Likes
https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/119 seems relevant, but it defines restricted personal information as " the Social Security number, the home address, home phone number, mobile phone number, personal email, or home fax number of, and identifiable to, that individual;"
2 Likes
The USA Today story is chilling.
Who?
Ryan Olthouse, Ryan Olthouse, Ryan Olthouse, Ryan Olthouse, Ryan Olthouse, Ryan Olthouse, Ryan Olthouse, Ryan Olthouse, Ryan Olthouse, Ryan Olthouse, Ryan Olthouse, Ryan Olthouse, Ryan Ryan Olthouse, Ryan Olthouse,
4 Likes
Incorrect spelling
2 Likes
The asshat has Johnny Cash as his profile pic. It’s hard not to imagine the Man in Black being very much “get the fuck outta here with that nonsense” to this shitheel.
4 Likes
Yep. That pic, IIRC, is from his show at Folsom Prison.
4 Likes
Judgeships (like everything else in U.S. government) are screwy and differ based on where you live. The judge here (Megan Shanahan) was appointed by John Kasich and then was elected by a wide margin the next year (getting to run for the first time as the incumbent makes life a lot easier). Her next election is 2022 and the county is 50/50 and trending dem, so she might be voted out over this crap if there’s a real pushback. But midterm elections for judges are generally very low vote count, fickle affairs.
2 Likes
Always neat to see Volokh roll the hard six and defend one of his non-odious principles for a change.
Disturbing on many levels: legally, morally, and ethically.
The definition you cite is of course specifically “restricted personal information” as opposed to “personally identifying information”.
The Reason article linked in the OP says that the only Ohio statute to define that term includes a person’s name in the list (which would seem obvious in ordinary language as well).
Given the judge already (whether rightly or wrongly) granted anonymity for the plaintiff, ordering the defendants not to publish his name for an initial (checks order) six days doesn’t seem much of an additional stretch.
I can’t currently track down whether the order was continued or even whether the hearing listed for 30th July took place.
Judging by the renewed motion for a preliminary injunction linked at Reason, it didn’t. But then, that filing seems to have some difficulties with linear time.
For example, it states that in response to posts on June 25th, the plaintiff filed a claim on June 22nd and refers to an order made following a hearing on June 24th.
Which is all pretty good going in a case where the complained of events apparently haven’t even taken place yet.
Assuming those are simply typos, it’s not a great look for a legal filing supposedly drawn up by competent attorneys.
1 Like
It’s from San Quentin, but yeah.
EDIT: had to google the exact quote, but it’s funny fitting enough to add in this here context:
Marshall told the San Francisco Art Exchange: “I said, ‘John, let’s do a shot for the warden’,” before Cash flipped the camera the bird.
https://www.nme.com/news/music/johnny-cash-19-1292708
3 Likes
