Mickey Chandler's SpamSuite

Just in!

Here is the Petition for the Writ of Certiorari filed with the US Supreme Court today by the Commonwealth of Virginia.

I couldn't find this anywhere, so I asked the Virginia AG's office if they would kindly send me a copy of the Petition filed today.

Just so you know what this Petition means in the scope of things: Nothing.

All this is, is the request by the Commonwealth of Virginia for the Supreme Court to take the case along with its reasoning as to why this case is important enough for them to consider. Most Petitions for Writs are denied without comment.

The question presented for the Supreme Court's consideration is this one:

When confronted with a claim that a statute is substantially overbroad and, thus, facially unconstitutional, is a court required to compare the statute's constitutional applications the statute's actual unconstitutional applications?

What the AG is claiming is that the Virginia Supreme Court took a flight into Fantasyland for the purpose of discovering a reason to overturn the statute to save Publius or some potential religious spammer without any consideration of if political or religious spam is a problem:

In other words, the court invalidated a statute on its face based on a hypothetical application that occurs very infrequently, if it occurs at all.

They point out a definite conflict in the US about how to decide if a statute is overbroad. Some courts use a comparative assessment that considers unconstitutional applications in comparison to constitutional applications and the government's interest (they cite the 1st, 3rd, and 10th Circuits as examples). Others (like the VA Supreme Court) use an absolutist approach where any conceivable unconstitutional application results in the statute's overturning.

The VA Attorney General, of course, wants the Supreme Court to adopt the comparative assessment.

I think they do a pretty good job of making their arguments, but I'm not an attorney or a constitutional scholar. So, we'll just have to see if the Supreme Court agrees.

Attachment	Date	Size
CertPetition.pdf	12/11/08 2:36 pm	2.04 MB