People v. Laine CA1/1

I.

FACTUAL AND PROCEDURAL

BACKGROUND

California Family Advocacy (CFA) is an organization aggrieved by the actions of courts and other agencies in family-law and dependency matters. It has conducted protests at courthouses and taken extremist positions, such as alleging that judges are “sex trafficking children” and selling their blood. About a year before the charged crimes, CFA mounted an effort to recall three Contra Costa County superior court judges, one of whom was the Honorable Jill Fannin. Judge Fannin presided over family law cases from 2011 to 2014, and she also had a juvenile court assignment earlier in her career. The recall effort was ultimately unsuccessful because CFA failed to gather enough signatures. CFA had a group Facebook page that was public, meaning a user did not have to be a member to view the page’s posts. The page contained various doctored images of judges, including depictions of judges with pigs’ features and behind bars. When Laine made the post at issue, the page had over 1,600 followers, who would be notified in their newsfeeds of the group’s posts. It is unclear from the record whether Laine was a member of the page. On the night of July 3,…