the people. but that bringing co2 emissions, these people are simply concerned with eking out a living. nick clark, sowfnedz. >> the supreme court has been asked to decide. it's "inside story." hello, i'm ray suarez.

there is a law against using the internet to launch physical threats against another person. the constitution does guarantee free speech rights but not in an unlimited way. year after year we have debates about just where the lines and limits are. can you make a first person shooter video game that allows the player to target barack and michelle obama? can you show military service people in action, as a sergeant generation ago tell people you were an officer and won decoration for valor or combat that you never earned? once more we asked the supreme court to step in and decide the legality of behavior that didn't exist when the framers did their work in the 1780s. james madison didn't have an ex wife or a facebook page. the internet makes it easy

to give anyone a piece of your mind and share it with the world in an instant. but if your words are aggressive or even threatening where's the line between free speech and crime? monday the supreme court heard the case of elonis versus the united states. anthony elonis made threats against his ex wife on facebook years ago. he was sentenced to 44 years in prison. >> it ais the harm that causes. >> after his ex wife tooblg children and left him, he wrote, i'm not going to rest until your body is a mess soaked in blood and dying from all the little cuts. hurry up and die. then a week later he published another post. fold up your protective order and put it in your pocket, is it thick enough to stop a bullet?

elonis argued he was exercising his freedom of speech in the post, at trial, those arguments didn't hold up. elonis was convicted of making threats in integrate communications. >> a threat is a threat, if i leave the message on your windshield or on your door, however i communicate, whatever medium i use, doesn't make it any less than a threat. >> elonis lawyer said his online comments were misinterpreted. >> the purpose of threatening somebody if they don't know they're being threatened, it's much more common to say, i'm not joking or you better believe in

this. >> it's what constitutes a true threat. whether the supreme court will use this case to define that more specifically in the age of the internet. the court is expected to make its decision by summer. elotis versus the united states, this time on the program, can anthony elonis use the disclaimer, to depict murder oust violence against his ex, or can his ex justify it in perceiving them as actual threats to her safety which are not protected speech? joining us for that conversation, clay calvert, director of the first amendment project at the university of florida, s sayel capur, and jamie floyd, al jazeera america legal contributor.

sayel, tell us what you saw. how was the argument and who staked out what territory? >> it was a very interesting argument ray because this was one of those cases where all nine justices seemed to agree that what this man, anthony elonis did was bad and it was wrong and they seemed to have no sympathy for what he did. at the same time they were really truss traited and grappling with how to circumscribe the law, that doesn't rope in innocent people because there is protected speech, there is true set which is not protected but the supreme court has never before addressed whether there has to be an intent toen threaten someone or harm them or suggest you will harm them or whether a reasonable person can simply construe it that way in order for there to be a possibility of a criminal conviction. so that was a struggle that they had. >> often in the often argument justices signal or pretty much come out and state that they're not buying one of the lawyer's

arguments around through exchanges back and forth, they sort of communicate exactly what their problem is, were there any exchanges that stand out for you in today's argument? >> the one exchange that stood out most today was justice alito. saying something on the lines of i don't remember the exact quote but he says, this sounds to me a road map for threatening your wife and getting away with it. that set the tone. >> clay calvert, the court has a record of being absolute what the first amendment means and building a wall around it. >> it's a very pro-free speech friendly, first amendment friendly court so far. brown versus independent merchants association, it protected the 18th family

antimilitary antigay speech it's protected all types of offensive speech, including one in videos, libertarian and free speech friendly streak. obviously what happens here remains to be scene but there's a good shot that the court will uphold some free speech here. >> newspaper radio station or standing on the corner and shouting at the top of your lungs? >> well, back in the 1990s the supreme court did hear a case on the internet. and the supreme court says the intrrnt iinternet is given the l panoply just like newspapers can. the court said well the internet is really more like print. so speech on the internet gets the full protections, juries and justices are going to have to grapple do people treat social

media differently than traditional media? the speech they see or hear on it? >> jamie, this was a divorced couple a bitter breakup the man was angry because his wife had moved to another state with the couple's children. had he said some of these things directly to her face or over the phone to her, would they exist in a different legal space from the one that we see here, with him posting rap lyrics on an internet site? >> many of the amicus briefs suggest what you say ray, rather than see this case through the prism of the internet, that we should see it through the same prism through which we see domestic violence cases, that really this is a tool that many abusers are using to exponentially target their

victims. perhaps some of the justices will be moved by some of those arguments perhaps, justice soto mayor or justice ginsburg perhaps. perhaps it's not broadcast perhaps it's not print but perhaps it's more like sending a letter or leaving a nasty note for your ex wife under her windshield. maybe we're communicating directly on social media at least in the context of a case like this in a way that is different from broadcast, or a newspaper editorial thing. >> well jamie if anthony elonis said these things about a public official would that be regarded different by the fbi? >> well, it's funny that you mention that because of course, one of the artists that he pairr

parodied, he said kill the president cil my wife. whatever his intent because the wife is very personal the president would be a political assassination and the fbi would have a very different response. but as we know in this case the fbi did investigate him and he began to target on the internet whatever his intent the fbi agent who came to him. that is what many directed his arrest and 44 months in prison. would be in this could court a very different case if we were talking about political threat, if we were talking about something that might involve the nsa and might involve the cia, and involving a personal

motivation like this one insofar as his wife viewed it. >> clay calvert does this case have the ability to make substantial law? would we be writing some new rules of the road for communications in online media? >> well, really, that's what the court has to address. the problem as is brought upper earlier is the court has never defined what constitutes a true threat very well at all. whether or not anthony elonis intent makes a difference or how a reasonable person would interpret that message. ramifications far beyond the narrow facts of this case. i think most people would agree what mr. elonis said was offensive and repultsiv repulsi. but it goes beyond that, to twitter, facebook where he posted his messages, to other

social platforms involved. >> when we come back, intent a very weighty part of the law. when people use social media to communicate fantasies, does the sender have any intention to carry them out? stay with us. conflict today >> world war one: through arab eyes only on al jazeera america

>> my name is elenor and for the last 25 years i was bernie madoff's secretary.

>> an unimaginable story of betrayal. >> they lived this incredible life. it just never occurred to me that they were living on the dime of the clients. >> greed... >> bernie was stealing every nickel but he wasn't trading anything. >> ... and entitlement. >> you took my grandchildren's future away from them. you. >> welcome back to "inside story" on al jazeera america. i'm ray suarez. arguments about the accused intention, was he or she really intending to kill. destruction of property, and what constitutes what the law calls a true threat in communications? in previous cases the supreme court has held that the first amendment does not protect true threats. did anthony elonis's violent

fantasies of murder posted online also signal violent intent, jamie floyd, this is a thing the supreme court justices are sitting there trying to weed through whether this guy meant something when he was posting, can they do it? >> i got to tell you this is an incredibly i think important case. it is really one of the most interesting cases we've seen in a long time because it's really the classic first amendment case but in a 21st century setting. so you take as you pointed out at the top of the show ray you take the law as initially written, back in the day of the founders, and you plop it into sort of a star trek moment and you see whether the constitution crumbles or hold its weight. and i think it will hold because it has with all the technological change, we had the printing press, the television,

all of that but the question is how does it work in the internet age and what are we expected to figure out in elonis mind, do you wait until he picks up a gun? he threatened to go to an elementary school for goodness sake and sloot it u shoot it up. do you wait until internet threats become real? at the same time you can't shut the thing down. so it's a very, very thorny problem for nine justices in robes to manage in the internet age and quite frankly i'm not sure how they hammer that out using the lack case was a 45-year-old case that established the true threat jurisprudence, that's where the law comes from and they have to modernize that for current day and age. judge saying that his client was misunderstood, was elonis lawyer

arguing before the justices, he didn't mean it? >> that's exactly what he was saying but the justices didn't really buy it. that's what remains to be seen. they are going to have to decide whether the subjective intent law prevails, simply whether a reasonable person can construe it to appear as a threat. so that's the big question the judges have to decide. and the justices were pondering all sorts of hadn't questions l questions. those are the questions that the justices were grappling with today and it's very unclear how they're going to rule an if they rule against mr. elonis how this

woe circumscribe the law. >> mr. elonis didn't do anything he wrote online but when you are trying to divine someone's intent do they have to walk out the door ready to do it, before we say, yes see, he really meant to do it. >> they don't have to walk out the door able to commit it. the supreme court has made clear in the past, you can have a true sense of intent even though the person doesn't intend to carry it out. what the justices were hearing was, justice roberts said what is a reasonable person supposed to know about rap music, that is an objective course the justices would follow. with rap music the argument was made this is a very complex

yeem, that has a lot of boasting toasting hyperbole and rhetoric. when eminem says something, do we believe him? that will be an issue when it goes down below. >> but that phrase that you use, subjective bent, isn't there really oant -- subjective intent, isn't there only one human being ton plan theat knows whether he meant it or not and that's anthony elonis,. >> that is typically the case, circumstantial evidence, had elonis visited her websites, who had she called in the past? justice ginsburg, how can you prove what's in somebody's mind? you can't really do it. courts do it all the time by

looking at things around them. maybe it's the websites he visited, exchanges before, if the court says his intent makes a difference they can't obviously get inside his head. they will need the surrounding circumstances to figure that out. >> clay calvert, thanks for being with us. jamie and sahil, stay where you are. we'll being back. as we look ahead, another case for the high court, a driver for ups, dismissed when she requested alternate duty until after she delivered. young versus united parcel service. in a minute stay with us.

>> you're watching "inside story" on aljazeera america. i'm ray suarez. >> you're watching "inside story" on al jazeera america. i'm ray suarez. wednesday the supreme court will hear arguments in the case of young versus united parcel

service. there's been a law on the book since the end of the quloint administratioclintonadministrate pregnancy delivery act. failed to accommodate her needs during a pregnancy during which time she was adviced by doctors to only do light duty work. sahil kapur and al jazeera's jamie york is still with us and tom gagan who specializes in employment law. tom in gender discrimination law only women get pregnant. it's an interesting challenge to talk about workplace accommodation and what it means when men and women are both working side by side in similar jobs. what does peggy young say should

have been done for her? >> peggy young says that the law as written should be applied. congress passed a law, ray, that says women affected by pregnancy or child bearing shall be treated as other employees, not so affected, but similar in their ability or inability to work. well, ups was accommodating people who had similar ability or inability to work, that is, they couldn't let th lift the 7s if they happened to be injured on the job or have a permanent disability. but didn't accommodate every single possible employee who had certain ability or inability. the fourth circuit said that didn't show the hostility to pregnancy so you're out. from my point of view from a

plaintiff employment lawyer's point of view, the lower courts just aren't reading the statute as it's written refusing to follow it. >> she lost in the lower courts and tom it's interesting to read this case because for a lightning time pregnant women in workplaces have argued to their bosses that they aren't disabled, that they shouldn't be reassigned, given different schedules because they are able to work. here's a different wrinkle, a different approach, she was advised buy doctor to not lift heavy packages during her pregnancy but this sort of goes against this modern workday approach, i can still work don't treat me as if i'm a delicate flower. >> well peggy young did say that and she said that in her existing job she didn't have to lift 70 pounds. that other employees occasionally did that.

and ray, i've had that personal experience. i've represented women who have these weight restrictions and lifting restrictions imposed upon them, oh you can't lift more than 20 pounds therefore we're going to get rid of you and these women are working as cashiers, they aren't lifting 20 pounds and they say hey this isn't really what i do. leave me in this job. so peggy young did say that. so the point is that the law itself says, okay, if 70 pounds really is the legitimate part of this job description, and if other employees who have been disabled in some way or another are getting light duty, she should get that too. congress didn't say it made any difference whether they were permanently disabled or not. the question is: is ups giving other employees the chance to do light duty who are similar to her in her ability or inability to work and they aren't giving it to her.

that's the whole case from the plaintiff's point of view. >> go ahead jamie. >> i'm leaping to get in here just because i think i'm the only one on the panel who's been pregnant. >> i think that's fair to say. >> and since we brought in personal experience i wasn't going to go there but i will now. ray, to address specifically your point and also the case at hand, about women and i think it's very astute that you mentioned for so long women say let me work until the day i think i should stop working or the day i give birth, that's pretty much what i did. because i was in a job that allowed me to do that. do the kinds of jocks that allow them to keep working because they don't have to lift say 70 pounds want to keep working. but this was a case where in the job she was in her doctor suggested she could not lift given the nature of her pregnancy more than 20 pounds.

and so she did not ask not to work. she asked to be reassigned within ups to a position that would allow her to do something that would not require her to lift the 20 pounds or more. and there were other employees with disabilities that were given these reassignments. so the reason this policy is discriminatory she argues and i guess i'm making the tbument as welargument aswell is it affecto have to lift, low income jobs women of color people who are in the kinds of entry level jobs where they have to do the lifting that they may not be able to do when they're pregnant. and very often women in higher paying jobs are not put in this position. there is an added class argument this this case and that is part of why a lot of the amicus briefs make an argument for

ms. young. >> let me close with sahil because 40% of the households have a woman that is the sole or primary breadwinner. this is true to get a lot of attention. >> she is very passionate about this one. gender equality is something she made her reputation on long before she became a judge. now to allow for accommodation that ms. young had asked for but the case moves forward regardless. i still think she has a very tough case before the supreme court because this supreme court is known for two things. one is protecting the interests of business as they see i.t. and the other is handing defeat after defeat to women's rights advocates. >> great to see you again, thanks all for being with us. that brings us to the end of

"inside story." also for being with us at home see you next time, in washington i'm ray suarez. are judge the president spent most of his day focused on ferguson too, and why hands up, shows no sign of surrender. facebook, gory postings showing up before the justices and what their decis m