Comic Transcript
MONK: You’re going to defend against a lawsuit brought by the ACLU on the grounds of free speech?
VIKTOR SCHRECK: That is exactly right.
VIKTOR SCHRECK: Due to a venerable perversion of Constitutional Law the Fourteenth Amendment grants corporations all the rights of citizens in the US. So we will claim that the ACLU, in bringing a lawsuit against us for sharing private customer data with the Federal Government, is attempting to suppress our First Amendment Rights.
ALEX: So you’re… what?
KING: That doesn’t sound right at all.
VIKTOR SCHRECK: It is sound legal reasoning.
SCOTT: But the First Amendment only protects citizens against intrusions by the government! It doesn’t offer any kind of protection against private organizations, and the ACLU is a private organization!
VIKTOR SCHRECK: But it is requesting that the government intervene, by way of a lawsuit, in order to get us to change our behavior. Thus the First Amendment comes into place.
(Silence.)
ALEX: Well?
SCOTT: No idea. I’m not a lawyer.
VIKTOR: That is true. I can see your shadow.