ProPublica Illinois Earns 13 Nominations for Peter Lisagor Awards From the Chicago Headline Club

On March 30, 2019 By admin

• Breaking News

by ProPublica

The Chicago Headline Club, the nation’s largest chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists, named ProPublica Illinois a finalist for 13 Peter Lisagor Awards. The Lisagor Awards honor the best journalism produced throughout Illinois and Northwest Indiana.

ProPublica Illinois received five nominations in the All Media categories, which span all news mediums and platform sizes, and eight nominations in the Online Media categories — including General Excellence in Online Journalism. These projects reflect the depth and range of the newsroom’s collective efforts, from features, original video and illustrations, to blog posts and investigative reporting. Winners will be announced on May 10.

The finalists are:

Best All Media

• Driven Into Debt, for best investigative reporting and best data journalism. The series, initiated by ProPublica Illinois and continued in partnership with WBEZ Chicago, outlines how the city of Chicago drives its residents into bankruptcy through ticketing practices that disproportionately affect black neighborhoods and motorists who can least afford the fines and fees.

• Hidden in Plain Sight, for best investigative reporting and best illustration. At the outset of the Trump administration’s zero-tolerance policy, four stories quickly uncovered the secretive network of Illinois shelters that serve as detention facilities for immigrant children.

• “We Will Keep on Fighting for Him,” for best feature story. As part of the $3 Million Research Breakdown investigative series, the feature details the heartbreak and struggle of a family caught up in a child psychiatry study gone awry — and blends deep original reporting with a mother’s journal entries and present-day reflections by her and her son.

Online Media

• ProPublica Illinois for general excellence in online journalism.

• Stuck Kids, for best non-deadline reporting series. The series showed how the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services fails to find appropriate homes for young people with mental illness, holding some children and teens in psychiatric hospitals even after they’ve been cleared for release, with serious consequences for their health and well-being.

• Politic-IL Insider, for best continuing blog and best individual blog post. The online investigative column from Mick Dumke provides a close look at political issues such as government transparency, civil liberties and criminal justice.

• “Going Bankrupt Over Ticket Debt in Chicago,” for best use of features video. The three-minute video profiled one woman’s descent into bankruptcy and illustrated inequities in Chicago’s vehicle ticketing system.

• Driven Into Debt, for best investigative/public service reporting. In addition to the series, an online news application, The Ticket Trap, shows how Chicago’s reliance on ticketing for revenue affects motorists across the city. The interactive database allows users to search more than 54 million tickets issued since 1996.

• “We Will Keep on Fighting for Him,” for best multimedia feature presentation and best feature story or series. Part of a series of stories that revealed misconduct in a research trial at the University of Illinois at Chicago for children with bipolar disorder, this interactive story highlighted a mother’s journal entries alongside present-day annotations, and used family photos, video and audio clips to intimately reveal the challenges of raising a child with mental illness.

In addition, reporting fellow Lakeidra Chavis was named a Radio Broadcast finalist in Best Health or Science Reporting for “Chicago’s Black Communities Hit Hardest In Opioid Overdoses,” a project that aired during her prior stint with WBEZ Chicago.

ProPublica Illinois, founded in 2017, is the first regional publishing operation of ProPublica, dedicated to stories about big issues that affect people living and working in the state. For the full list of Peter Lisagor Awards nominees, visit the Chicago Headline Club’s website.

The European Media’s Deep Bias Against Conservatives

On March 30, 2019 By admin

• Breaking News

I was fired last week. It happened when I received an email from the editor-in-chief of an outlet I’d contributed to for the last eight months, saying that he’d found a social media post of mine to be unacceptable. This is said post:

For context: Greta Thunberg is a 16-year-old Swedish climate change activist who sparked international (though most notable in Europe) school walkouts to demand “climate action” from governments. Thunberg hasn’t done anything but moralize about how we need to reverse capitalism to save the earth. For that, she got to speak at the World Economic Forum, and has since been nominated to receive the Nobel Peace Prize (though Barack Obama also got one, so the relevance has certainly diminished). The protests received a lot of favorable coverage, with children appearing on TV uncommented on and unquestioned.

I don’t consider that professional journalism. Even though reporting is something I myself only do on occasion, I still get to have opinions on it, particularly since I write columns and analysis pieces. My post was there to illustrate how the reporting would have been much different had the children held less popular beliefs. I don’t mind if The Guardian or The Independent has a lack of consistency, because those are both far-left broadsheets. But this bias has become obvious at supposedly “objective” outlets too.

The editor told me he expects opinions to be backed up by facts. In essence: the hypothetical scenario I was drawing could only be drawn if it actually happened, which would make it not a hypothetical. …Right.

The same editor also wrote in his email: “Some of your columns have suffered from the same problem, and I have worked hard with you to give you a chance to improve. I now see a pattern here that I fear I am unable to change.”

Give that some thought. I am a contractor writing opinions for your news outlet, yet you’ve taken it upon yourself to change those opinions? Note that this is an outlet that pretends to have no political bias, that supposedly allows diversity of thought. Apparently not. Said outlet received €100,000 ($113,000) in government subsidies in 2018.

A bit more than a year ago, I was fired from a public radio broadcaster after I submitted a column criticizing the overblown and overpaid public sector in my home country. Echoing my more recent episode, an editor claimed my statement that the public sector is inefficient was “not factual.” Here as well, I was initially brought in to diversify the range of opinions. On the same taxpayer-funded broadcaster, you can listen to a wide range of left-wing pseudo-intellectuals day in and day out, lambasting global predatory capitalism and recommending the creation of new welfare programs.

Sometimes they do get caught.

German public broadcaster ADR was recently found to have commissioned a framing document by a linguistic expert, in order to find ways to demonize opponents of Germany’s media royalty, which taxes all citizens to fund public broadcasting. The linguist recommended that those who do not want to pay the fee shouldn’t be labeled simply as opponents, but as “questioning the authority of democratic decisions.” She also recommended that ARD portray those opponents as acting “contrary to democracy,” “untrustworthy,” and “disloyal.” Rejecting the media fee should be portrayed as “asking for less democracy.” She even suggested new slogans for ARD: “Others want profits, we want cultural profits,” “TV without censorship for profits,” “excellence instead of profits.” The idea was to demonize both opponents of the licensing fee and private media companies that could replace the functions of public broadcasting.

These outlets need to be asked: what have you become?

Does anyone remember when The Economist was a thorough magazine with classically liberal leanings? Today, you get stories about how Emmanuel Macron walks on water. “Electoral victory will make France’s president a potent force,” they say. Hah. I think in journalism school, that counts as “headlines that don’t age well.”

The British BBC has had so many controversies that Wikipedia has a six-subcategory list for them. Many news outlets in Europe suffer from the same problem: a consistent lack of objective reporting.

The French news show Quotidien reported on Elizabeth Warren claiming to be Native American and Donald Trump betting $1 million against it as Trump losing the bet since Warren’s DNA test revealed her to be “part” Native American. That the “part” was between 1/64th and 1/1,024th was not mentioned.

Or how about the German Spiegel journalist who got caught writing fake news about Fergus Falls, Minnesota? Claes Relotius pretended that this town of Trump voters had a sign at its entrance saying “Mexicans out” and embellished the portraits of the people he interviewed with completely fictitious stories. The fact that Relotius was awarded with two “Journalist of the Year” awards by CNN is just a bonus at this point.

The European press in general suffers from political bias that clearly goes in one direction. No wonder, what with all the journalists graduating from universities where Che Guevara T-shirts are common, and with a majority of news outlets either owned by the government or funded by it. There isn’t much room in such an environment to question the Etat-providence, the “providing state,” better known as the welfare state. Anyone questioning it must be demonized and laid off.

Bill Wirtz comments on European politics and policy in English, French, and German. His work has appeared in Newsweek, The Washington Examiner, CityAM, Le Monde, Le Figaro, and Die Welt.

Good Grief. Ben Shapiro Is Not Alt-Right

On March 30, 2019 By admin

• Breaking News

Don’t know if you heard about it or not, but this week, The Economist magazine smeared the conservative writer Ben Shapiro by calling him a member of the alt-right, and a “radical conservative.” (The magazine apologized when it was called out.) It was a stunning move, given how much alt-right polemicists despise Shapiro, a religious Jew who has had to endure an immense amount of anti-Semitic abuse from them. It doesn’t require much googling to discover this. Shapiro is, in fact, a conventional conservative of the Anglo-American strain, and a gifted debater and writer. He is not remotely a figure of the alt-right, and not a “radical” in any way (except being radically good at getting his point across). It is really remarkable that a magazine of The Economist‘s caliber made that fundamental error. It brings to mind that crackpot 2017 analysis of religion and US conservative politics made by an Italian Jesuit and an Argentinian Calvinist, who beclowned themselves by the act.

Read that Economist interview with him and see if there’s anything remotely radical or alt-right in it. In fact, the hook for the interview was his new book,  The Right Side Of History: How Reason And Moral Purpose Made The West Great . In the first few paragraphs, Shapiro writes:

That’s all you had to read to know that this guy Shapiro, whatever he is, ain’t an alt-rightist or a “radical conservative.” But the Economist figured they knew better.

David Marcus says that The Economist, the flagship journal of globalist neoliberalism, got this basic fact about Ben Shapiro wrong because the Left simply does not understand conservatism to begin with.  This is because so many senior journalists live in a bubble where elementary distinctions among conservatives are invisible to them. Excerpt:

The best antidote to this problem is better literacy regarding the conservative movement in mainstream outlets. When Kevin Williamson can’t work at the Atlantic, when the very moderate conservatives at the New York Times are pilloried as extremists, and when the Washington Post pretends its ex-conservative columnists represent anything but a small cabal of die-hard NeverTrumpers, readers get a skewed and distorted vision of conservatives that blurs the very real and bright line between the right and the alt-right.

Favoring control of the border and more limited illegal immigration is not an alt-right position unless it is rooted in the belief that such immigration forebodes white genocide. Opposing affirmative action is not an alt-right position unless it is rooted in pseudo-scientific babbling about the racial superiority of white people. Opposing foreign wars is not an alt-right position unless it is rooted in the belief that Jews and Israel are pulling the purse strings that send American soldiers to their death.

Conflating these positions is a very dangerous thing. It creates an environment in which liberals and progressives feel it not only an option but also, often, a duty to not engage with very mainstream conservative ideas. Calling Ben Shapiro a sage of the alt-right is meant to do exactly what protesters who de-platform his speeches do: Keep people from hearing his ideas rather than simply disagreeing with them.

Read it all.

If the only thing you knew about right-of-center populist/nationalist movements in continental Europe was what you read in the US and UK media, you would think that fascists are on the march. There really are some fascists on the march in Europe — but you absolutely cannot trust our media to tell you who they are. For example, here’s a headline in the conservative (!) Telegraph right now:

The story is actually interesting, and tells us something about the Vox party. Excerpt:

Abroad such influence is likely to be seen as further evidence of public discontent manifesting itself in political extremism – from Golden Dawn in Greece to the Front National (FN) in France. But Mr Espinosa [the Vox leader] is keen to distinguish Vox from those parties, and says he would “never appear on a platform with them” or with a leader like France’s Marine Le Pen. The only thing Vox shares with the FN, he says, is its hard line on immigration. He wants Spain to be able to say “how many [immigrants] and which ones” are allowed in and demand those arriving “accept the basic rules that the Western world has developed to create the most advanced civilisation in world history.”

Vox is usually described in Spain’s left-dominated press, and in the Anglo-American media, as “far right.” Vox’s actual positions are pretty much where many in the US Republican Party is on key issues. It’s economically liberal (that is, pro-market), for immigration restriction, critical of multiculturalism, and pro-life. It opposes same-sex marriage, but favors civil unions for gay couples. Vox is somewhat skeptical of the EU, and believes in protecting Spanish sovereignty. Vox wants to repeal a “gender violence” law that it believes discriminates against males, replacing it with one that applies equally to males and females.

Here is an English-language story from El País, a major left-wing Spanish daily, giving more details about Vox’s platform. 

Of course, El País calls Vox “far-right” — as did The New York Times in January, adding “anti-immigrant” as well. It is certainly true that Vox is hostile to the immigration status quo in Spain, which took in more migrants in 2018 than any other European country — over 57,000, which represents about half the total that entered European territory. When I was in Sevilla earlier this year, one of the people who came to hear my talk told me that his relative there in Andalucia works for the Spanish coast guard, and is on the front lines of the migration surge. He was so fed up with what is happening with the lawlessness, and how nobody in Madrid seems to care, that he voted for Vox.

Does this make that man “far right”? I don’t know about you, but my idea of “far right” is, you know, fascism, not simply wanting one’s nation to control its borders.

You call people like Ben Shapiro alt-right, and you demonize ordinary right-of-center parties as “far right,” and convince yourself that they are that, you are actually helping the bad guys. You really are.

The Atlantic Politics & Policy Daily: The Final Countdown

On March 30, 2019 By admin

• Breaking News

What We’re Following Today

It’s Friday, March 29.

‣ Linda McMahon, a former pro-wrestling executive and the current head of the Small Business Administration, will reportedly resign from her position to chair President Donald Trump’s super PAC, America First Action.

Here’s what else we’re watching:

Will the Public Ever See the Mueller Report?: Attorney General William Barr said he plans to share with Congress Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report by mid-April, if not sooner. In his letter to Senator Lindsey Graham and Representative Jerry Nadler, heads of Congress’s two judiciary committees, Barr also said that he will not share the contents of the report with the White House before releasing it, and noted that his summary of the findings from last week was “not an exhaustive recounting” of Mueller’s report, which is nearly 400 pages long.

But that doesn’t mean the public will see the review in full, reports Natasha Bertrand. “Between the withholding of grand-jury and privileged material and the redaction of classified information, the public could be left with a shell of the original report.”

Listen to this week’s episode of Radio Atlantic, in which the staff writers Edward-Issac Dovere and McKay Coppins discuss what all this means for 2020.

Remember the Pee Tape?: Many of the president’s critics were disappointed last week when Barr declared that Mueller’s investigation all but cleared the president of wrongdoing. But the “seeds of the disappointment” were planted two years ago, when BuzzFeed News first published an unverified—and unverifiable—dossier compiled by the British-intelligence operative Christopher Steele, argues David Graham. The salacious document “set the stage for the political response to investigations to come—inflating expectations in the public, moving the goalposts for Trump in a way that has fostered bad behavior, and tainting the press’s standing.”

Call Me a Socialist!: Joe Sanberg, a multimillionaire investor, might be running for president.  Sanberg supports Medicare for all, the Green New Deal, increased regulation, and expanding the social safety net. He has no name recognition, but in an election where Trump has painted the Democrats as radical socialists, Sanberg thinks he has an edge: “Good luck to them if they want to call me a socialist, because businesspeople aren’t socialists,” he told Edward-Isaac Dovere.  

— Elaine Godfrey and Madeleine Carlisle

Snapshot

Three-year-old Ailianie Hernandez waits with her mother, Julianna Ageljo, to apply for the nutritional-assistance program at the Department of Family Affairs in Bayamón, Puerto Rico. The island’s government says it lacks sufficient federal funding to help people recover from Hurricane Maria amid a 12-year recession. (Carlos Giusti / AP)

Ideas From The Atlantic

Barbara Bush’s Long-Hidden ‘Thoughts on Abortion’ (Susan Page)
“In 1980, when George H. W. Bush was making his first bid for the presidency, Barbara Bush covered four sheets of lined paper with her bold handwriting, then tucked the pages into a folder with her diary and some personal letters. She was trying to sort out what she believed about one of the most divisive issues of the day.” → Read on.

The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act Is Confusing Taxpayers (Mark Mazur)
“Although the most recent IRS data show that average income-tax refunds are closely tracking the average refund from last year, taxpayers have been complaining in interviews with journalists and on social media that their refund is smaller than expected or that they unexpectedly owe additional tax. Given that the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act was all about tax cuts, how can this be?” → Read on.

Quit Harping on U.S. Aid to Israel (James Kirchick)
“U.S. assistance to Israel demands far less—in both blood and treasure—than many other American defense relationships around the world.” → Read on.

What Else We’re Reading

‣ An Awkward Kiss Changed How I Saw Joe Biden (Lucy Flores, New York)
‣ Our President of the Perpetual Grievance (Susan B. Glasser, The New Yorker) (? Paywall)
‣ Former Trump Family Driver Has Been in ICE Custody for 8 Months (Miriam Jordan, The New York Times) (? Paywall)
‣ Is Pete Buttigieg a Political Genius? (Alex Shephard, The New Republic)
‣ The Blue State Trump Thinks He Can Flip in 2020 (Alex Isenstadt, Politico)

We’re always looking for ways to improve The Politics & Policy Daily. Comments, questions, typos, grievances and groans related to our puns? Let us know anytime here.

Were you forwarded this newsletter? Sign up for our daily politics email here. We have many other free email newsletters on a variety of other topics. Find the full list here.

The Atlantic Politics & Policy Daily: The Final Countdown

On March 30, 2019 By admin

• Breaking News

What We’re Following Today

It’s Friday, March 29.

‣ Linda McMahon, a former pro-wrestling executive and the current head of the Small Business Administration, will reportedly resign from her position to chair President Donald Trump’s super PAC, America First Action.

Here’s what else we’re watching:

Will the Public Ever See the Mueller Report?: Attorney General William Barr said he plans to share with Congress Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report by mid-April, if not sooner. In his letter to Senator Lindsey Graham and Representative Jerry Nadler, heads of Congress’s two judiciary committees, Barr also said that he will not share the contents of the report with the White House before releasing it, and noted that his summary of the findings from last week was “not an exhaustive recounting” of Mueller’s report, which is nearly 400 pages long.

But that doesn’t mean the public will see the review in full, reports Natasha Bertrand. “Between the withholding of grand-jury and privileged material and the redaction of classified information, the public could be left with a shell of the original report.”

Listen to this week’s episode of Radio Atlantic, in which the staff writers Edward-Issac Dovere and McKay Coppins discuss what all this means for 2020.

Remember the Pee Tape?: Many of the president’s critics were disappointed last week when Barr declared that Mueller’s investigation all but cleared the president of wrongdoing. But the “seeds of the disappointment” were planted two years ago, when BuzzFeed News first published an unverified—and unverifiable—dossier compiled by the British-intelligence operative Christopher Steele, argues David Graham. The salacious document “set the stage for the political response to investigations to come—inflating expectations in the public, moving the goalposts for Trump in a way that has fostered bad behavior, and tainting the press’s standing.”

Call Me a Socialist!: Joe Sanberg, a multimillionaire investor, might be running for president.  Sanberg supports Medicare for all, the Green New Deal, increased regulation, and expanding the social safety net. He has no name recognition, but in an election where Trump has painted the Democrats as radical socialists, Sanberg thinks he has an edge: “Good luck to them if they want to call me a socialist, because businesspeople aren’t socialists,” he told Edward-Isaac Dovere.  

— Elaine Godfrey and Madeleine Carlisle

Snapshot

Three-year-old Ailianie Hernandez waits with her mother, Julianna Ageljo, to apply for the nutritional-assistance program at the Department of Family Affairs in Bayamón, Puerto Rico. The island’s government says it lacks sufficient federal funding to help people recover from Hurricane Maria amid a 12-year recession. (Carlos Giusti / AP)

Ideas From The Atlantic

Barbara Bush’s Long-Hidden ‘Thoughts on Abortion’ (Susan Page)
“In 1980, when George H. W. Bush was making his first bid for the presidency, Barbara Bush covered four sheets of lined paper with her bold handwriting, then tucked the pages into a folder with her diary and some personal letters. She was trying to sort out what she believed about one of the most divisive issues of the day.” → Read on.

The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act Is Confusing Taxpayers (Mark Mazur)
“Although the most recent IRS data show that average income-tax refunds are closely tracking the average refund from last year, taxpayers have been complaining in interviews with journalists and on social media that their refund is smaller than expected or that they unexpectedly owe additional tax. Given that the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act was all about tax cuts, how can this be?” → Read on.

Quit Harping on U.S. Aid to Israel (James Kirchick)
“U.S. assistance to Israel demands far less—in both blood and treasure—than many other American defense relationships around the world.” → Read on.

What Else We’re Reading

‣ An Awkward Kiss Changed How I Saw Joe Biden (Lucy Flores, New York)
‣ Our President of the Perpetual Grievance (Susan B. Glasser, The New Yorker) (? Paywall)
‣ Former Trump Family Driver Has Been in ICE Custody for 8 Months (Miriam Jordan, The New York Times) (? Paywall)
‣ Is Pete Buttigieg a Political Genius? (Alex Shephard, The New Republic)
‣ The Blue State Trump Thinks He Can Flip in 2020 (Alex Isenstadt, Politico)

We’re always looking for ways to improve The Politics & Policy Daily. Comments, questions, typos, grievances and groans related to our puns? Let us know anytime here.

Were you forwarded this newsletter? Sign up for our daily politics email here. We have many other free email newsletters on a variety of other topics. Find the full list here.

Opinion analysis: Justices uphold securities liability for distributing false statements

On March 30, 2019 By admin

• Breaking News

This morning’s decision in Lorenzo v. Securities and Exchange Commission brings no surprises, as the court’s holding follows the views apparent at the oral argument (discussed in my earlier post). Specifically, Justice Stephen Breyer’s opinion for six justices holds that defendant Francis Lorenzo is liable for participating in an unlawful scheme to defraud by distributing false statements written by his supervisor, even though the supervisor’s role protected Lorenzo from any liability for “making” the statements himself.

Although the case affects several related provisions of the securities laws, its principal application is Rule 10b-5 of the Securities and Exchange Commission. That rule has three subsections, and this case involves the distinction between the second subsection and the first and third subsections. On the one hand, subsection (b) specifically proscribes “mak[ing] any untrue statement of a material fact”; on the other, subsections (a) and (c) more generally proscribe “employ[ing] any device, scheme, or artifice to defraud” and “engag[ing] in any act, practice, or course of business which operates … as a fraud or deceit.” With regard to subsection (b), we know from the Supreme Court’s 2011 decision in Janus Capital v First Derivative Traders that only the “maker” of the statement is liable for its falsity. Here, where Lorenzo is not responsible as the “maker” of false statements drafted by his supervisor, the question arises whether he still can be held responsible for fraud under the more general provisions of subsections (a) and (c) because he sent those statements in personal emails to his individual customers.

A majority of the justices (including all four of the dissenters from the 5-4 decision in Janus) hold that Lorenzo is liable. As you would have expected from the argument, Breyer’s central point is a plain-language move: “It would seem obvious that the words in [the more general provisions], are, as ordinarily used, sufficiently broad to include within their scope the dissemination of false or misleading information with the intent to defraud.” Indeed, for the majority, “it is difficult to see how … sending emails [Lorenzo] understood to contain material untruths … could escape the reach of those provisions.” Breyer “strengthens this conclusion” by reciting dictionary definitions suggesting that the provisions should “capture a wide range of conduct,” readily including any “artful stratagem.” Acknowledging the possibility of “borderline cases,” the majority could “see nothing borderline about … disseminating false or misleading information to prospective investors with the intent to defraud.”

I expect that the most important part of the opinion will be subpart II(C), the section that rejects Lorenzo’s argument that “the only way to be liable for false statements is through those provisions that refer specifically to false statements.” The majority firmly rejects the “premise … that each of th[e] provisions [of Rule 10b-5] should be read as governing different, mutually exclusive, spheres of conduct.” Rather, Breyer recalls the Supreme Court’s characterization of the securities law as a “first experiment in federal regulation of the securities industry,” and notes that the Supreme Court often has thought it best to treat the statute as “includ[ing] both a general proscription against fraudulent … practices and, out of an abundance of caution, a specific proscription against nondisclosure.” The best example of overlap, Breyer explains, is in subsections (a) and (c): “It should go without saying that at least some conduct amounts to ‘employ[ing]’ a ‘device, scheme, or artifice to defraud’ under subsection (a) as well as ‘engag[ing] in a[n] act … which operates … as a fraud’ under subsection (c).”

The court plainly is motivated by the sense that accepting Lorenzo’s view would mean that “behavior [like Lorenzo’s], though plainly fraudulent, might otherwise fall outside the scope of the rule.” For Breyer, “using false representations to induce the purchase of securities would seem a paradigmatic example of securities fraud. We do not know why Congress or the Commission would have wanted to disarm enforcement in this way.”

Finally, Breyer considers the argument of Justice Clarence Thomas (joined by Justice Neil Gorsuch in dissent) that the decision renders Janus a “dead letter.” The majority (which includes Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito, two of the three remaining members of the Janus majority) develops a timeline of drafting, issuing and disseminating false statements. In that conception, Janus held that an individual did not “make” statements under subsection (b) if the individual “helped draft misstatements issued by a different entity that controlled the statements’ content.” That case “said nothing about … the dissemination of false” statements, and thus “would remain relevant (and preclude liability) where an individual neither makes nor disseminates false information.”

As I suggested above, this outcome cannot really surprise observers of the oral argument, which centered on Lorenzo’s dissemination of information that he knew to be false for the purpose of inducing investors to make bad investments. That activity evidently struck a majority of the justices as reprehensibly fraudulent conduct of the kind that should be at the center of securities enforcement efforts. Because most of the justices appeared to see this as a case of core enforcement rather than a stretch, a straightforward decision imposing liability seemed inevitable. It remains to be seen whether the court’s paean to a broad interpretation of securities liability will spur more creative action by the SEC in the years to come.

The post Opinion analysis: Justices uphold securities liability for distributing false statements appeared first on SCOTUSblog.