SCOTUS Rules Petiton Signatures Are Public Record

Reader SheeEttin reminds us that back in October, the Supreme Court accepted a case testing whether or not petition signers' names could be kept anonymous. (The premise was that the act of signing a petition is covered by free speech, and thus signers are entitled to anonymity, especially to protect them from harassment.) Now the Court has issued its ruling: signatures are part of the public record. "By a strong majority Thursday, the Supreme Court issued a setback for opponents of gay marriage who wanted to keep their identities secret. The justices favored transparency over privacy in a case testing whether signing a petition is a public act. The case began with a bill that the Washington state legislature passed in 2009, expanding the state's domestic partnership law. The new referendum was known as 'everything but marriage' for the enhanced rights it gave same-sex couples. People who opposed the bill gathered 120,000 signatures for a ballot measure asking voters to repeal it. That measure eventually reached Washington voters, who upheld 'everything but marriage.' Those who signed the repeal petition feared that they would be harassed if their names became public, so they went to court challenging Washington's Public Records Act. They argued that signing a petition is speech that is protected from disclosure. But in Thursday's 8-1 ruling, the Supreme Court disagreed. 'Such disclosure does not, as a general matter, violate the first amendment,' Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for the court."

Comments

Re:Well then,

[bsDaemon]

Yes

Re:While I agree that anonymity is a good thing...

[Etcetera]

Those who sued to get the names of the people who signed the petition did so so that they could harrass the more prominent people who signed it.

You use the word "harrass", but I wonder if you didn't actually mean "shame". There is a big difference between harrassment and calling someone out for a hateful attitude towards a minority with a different lifestyle that in reality has little affect on any straight person. I wonder if you could consider gay marriage bans a "harrassment" of gays?

Well okay then, what would you consider this: http://www.eightmaps.com/

Harrassment? Shaming? Needless publicization of private citizens? Posting the names and address of abortion doctors? Legally-authorized Johns Lists? A public sex offender registry? It's a quite slippery slope you've got there.

The difference is that most of the later examples entail *actions* on the part of the listees, either judicially designated or not. If someone thinks that the doctor who performed an abortion is a murderer, that's at least rational (though perhaps not reasonable, depending on your political viewpoint).

The people who signed a petition did not, ipso facto, perform a procedure, or commit a crime, or to any rational-minded person cause any plausible actual harm. They expressed themselves through government action. If anything is going to get protection against "outing" and forced-deanonymization, it really should be political "actions" taken like voting, speaking, petitioning, or publishing pamphlets.

For better or for worse, the SC decided today that even that doesn't warrant a presumption of privacy. Que sera, sera.