Setting one above another
The state of Washington attempted to protect their law enforcement personnel by passing a law that prohibited the dissemination of personnal information about “law enforcement-related employees if it was being done for malicious reasons.” A federal judge ruled that the law was unconstitutional because it went against the First Amendment (free speech). If the information is obtained legally from public sources, anyone can post that information on a web site, even if it contains such personal information as phone numbers and social security numbers.
Legislators will try to draft another law that protects public servants without stepping on the Constitution. But what is troubling here is the narrowness of the protection. Why are law enforcement personnel protected, but not farmers? Or waitresses? Or firemen?
This law was indeed unconstitutional, but only because of the First Amendment. What is disturbing is that laws like this are not challenged on Fourteenth Amendment grounds, namely the Equal Protection Clause. To do otherwise is to establish a class system that is an anathema, a bane to democracy.
