Judge rules a 2019 law singling out Huawei is constitutional

[Karlston]

Denied —

Judge rules a 2019 law singling out Huawei is constitutional

Judge says ban on Huawei purchases isn't an unconstitutional bill of attainder.

Enlarge / A customer looks at a Huawei smartphone in a Huawei store in Moscow.

Sergei Karpukhin / TASS via Getty Images

A federal judge has slapped down a Huawei lawsuit that sought to overturn a ban on federal agencies buying Huawei telecommunications gear. Congress passed the legislation, part of the military's 2019 appropriations bill, out of concern that the Chinese government could infiltrate Huawei-based networks.

 

Huawei had argued that the law was unconstitutional under the Constitution's ban on bills of attainder. The federal government argued that was nonsense. On Tuesday, Texas Federal Judge Amos Mazzant sided with the government.

 

The Constitution prohibits Congress from imposing "bills of attainder"—legislation that singles out individuals for punishment without trial. This was an infamous practice in Great Britain in the decades before the American Revolution. Huawei argued that it was a "person" under US law and hence entitled to this protection.

 

The judge disagreed. Even if you grant the premise that Huawei is a person, he said, the ban on buying Huawei and ZTE equipment simply wasn't the kind of punishment prohibited by the bill of attainder rule.

 

Congress' ban on federal agencies purchasing a range of telecom products from Huawei and ZTE "represents no more than a customer's decision to take its business elsewhere," Mazzant wrote.

Corporations don’t get embarrassed or lose friends

Huawei claimed that Congress passed the ban on buying Huawei equipment to punish Huawei. If true, that could make the law unconstitutional. The government countered that what it did was simply a pragmatic decision to shore up national security.

 

A key factor here is whether a measure brands the target with a badge of "disloyalty and infamy." In a 2003 ruling, for example, an appeals court ruled that it was unconstitutional for Congress to restrict a specific man's right to visit his daughter based on allegations that he had sexually abused her. The problem, the court said, wasn't only the loss of the visitation rights itself, but also the embarrassment of being publicly branded a sexual abuser by Congress.

 

Banning Huawei from selling gear to the federal government is totally different, the judge ruled. Corporations can't feel embarrassed, and they don't have to worry about losing friends. The legislation left Huawei with plenty of other opportunities: it was free to sell its gear to private parties in the United States as well as to thousands of potential customers, public and private, outside the United States.

 

Judge Mazzant pointed to a similar ruling made by another court in 2018. In that case, Kaspersky challenged a provision of the 2018 National Defense Appropriations Act that banned federal agencies from doing business with Russian IT security firm Kaspersky Lab. As in the Huawei case, legislators were worried that Kaspersky could have deep ties to a foreign government—in this case, Russia.

 

But Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, a federal trial judge in Washington DC, rejected Kaspersky's arguments. She ruled that the government choosing not to buy a company's product was simply not a punishment—particularly if the decision is based on a weighty concern like national security.

 

"Corporations are very different," she wrote. "Reputation is an asset that companies cultivate, manage, and monetize. It is not a quality integral to a company's emotional well-being, and its diminution exacts no psychological cost."

 

Mazzant repeatedly cites Kollar-Kotelly's reasoning in his own ruling, arguing that precisely the same logic applies.

 

To bolster its claim that the legislation was punitive, Huawei quoted several members of Congress that appear to show an intent to punish.

 

Huawei and ZTE "have proven themselves to be untrustworthy, and at this point I think the only fitting punishment would be to give them the death penalty-that is, to put them out of business in the United States," said Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) in 2018.

 

But Mazzant waved those examples away, arguing that they represent the views of a few individual legislators, not the intent of the Congress as a whole. He argued that congressional intent is better judged by looking at the actual text of the legislation as well as official congressional findings the law was based on. Those documents, Mazzant concluded, show that Congress was focused on protecting US federal networks from Chinese hackers, not on punishing Huawei for perceived misconduct in the past.

 

 

Source: Judge rules a 2019 law singling out Huawei is constitutional (Ars Technica)  

[steven36]

2 hours ago, Karlston said:

Corporations don’t get embarrassed or lose friends

They shouldn't be  protected because they don't  follow it , not a day goes by you don't read about some corporations breaking  it.

 

Quote

The Constitution protects free speech, but internet companies are succumbing to public pressure to restrict it.

 

They don't follow the law themselves , they follow the court of public opinion  . Huawei is no different they try use public opinion to sway there outcome and i don't see were it's helped them at all or will it help them in a US court of law. Only thing going to help them if the DOJ drops there case or if they can  convince a judge and jury that there innocent . Only thing going to help them about being ban is if Congress changes there opinion of them. Huawei had to testify in front congress years ago for the same thing they in court now  for . this has been brewing every since they started selling stuff in the USA  many years ago.  The difference   is when a foreign entity  does it it called stealing US trade secrets because patient infringement  dont apply to them like it does US Tech so the US Goverment has to do something about  it because there based under China . were if they a US tech company it's just a civil matter and they have to fight it out among  themselves .  If your not from the USA  and you sell to the USA  you have very little rights  all they have to do is forbid you from selling it .You can fight it but if you have no real  evidence  they are never going to remove the ban.

 

It's nothing new  and it really don't make any sense  how can you have free trade  with one country thats communist like China  and ban stuff like Cigars and rum from Cuba because there communist and still ban stuff from Russia that been ban since they was the USSR  like Caviar and Vodka ? But China and Russia are the same way they ban stuff from the USA they find not to be suitable  for there outlooks  on life. Noting is fair  about trade  it never has been only trade is free  if they allow it.