New reports have revealed that the company that operated the vessel that struck the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore have a history of punishing whistleblowers who point out safety violations by the company. Then, the state of Florida has passed a major new law that limits social media use for children, banning popular apps for anyone under the age of 14. Mike Papantonio & Farron Cousins discuss more.

Transcript:

*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.

Mike Papantonio: New reports have revealed that the company that operated the vessel that struck the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore, well, they have a history of punishing whistleblowers who point out safety violations by the company. And this investigation continues. We’re probably gonna hear more and more stories about the company’s gross misconduct. I’ve got Ring of Fire’s Farron Cousins with me to talk about this. So, Farron, what struck me about this story, okay, I get that there should be no, you know, we represent whistleblowers. I understand that very, very well. I don’t understand what the problem is if an employee says, look, you got problems with the boat and he tells the employer that, and at the same time he tells the Coast Guard. What’s, tell me about your take on this story. Maybe I’m missing something.

Farron Cousins: Well, we’ve got this law called the Siemens Protection Act. And what it says is that, hey, if you’re working on the water, on a boat, whatever it is, you go to the Coast Guard when you have issues with the company rather than going to company management. So it is a bit weird. You have the federal government saying, hey, listen, if you see a problem, don’t go to your boss. You come tell us. And it may have to, it’s a confusing law. And again, like you said, I’m not sure it makes total sense.

Mike Papantonio: It doesn’t.

Farron Cousins: But if we’re trying to rationalize it, it might be because of what’s at stake. Obviously, when you’re in a very large barge or vessel out there, a problem may immediately need a regulator to come in and fix it before the company could. Maybe.

Mike Papantonio: Right. Think about what you just said. We’re saying go to the bureaucracy first before you tell your employer. Yeah. The employer, I guess maybe this was done to protect the potential whistleblower, but the whistleblower has protection anyway, whether they go to the employer and say, look, you got something on barge that’s gonna kill people. And that’s what happened here. Six people were dead. And they had all kinds of problems on this barge. They got fire control problems. They had mechanical problems that were overwhelming. They had seaworthy problems that were overwhelming. So you go to the employer and say, you got these problems, at the same time you go to the Coast Guard. But I’m just not following this when they’re saying, go to the bureaucrats first. Right? Go to the labor department first, especially if it’s something as important and timely as this, it’s kind of exigent kind of problem, isn’t it?

Farron Cousins:: Yeah. And when you are talking about problems like this, obviously the person or or group who’s in an immediate position to be able to fix it would be the company itself. But with this particular whistleblower in question, it wasn’t necessarily about that particular boat. But this whistleblower had told the company, he said, listen, you’ve got problems with the safety features. You’ve got problem with the boats themselves. You got people drinking on the job.

Mike Papantonio: And they didn’t do anything.

Farron Cousins: Right.

Mike Papantonio: That’s different.

Farron Cousins: Exactly.

Mike Papantonio: So that’s the distinction in this story.

Farron Cousins: Yeah. And so that’s what is weird about it is you’ve got this law that almost conflicts with common sense.

Mike Papantonio: It does. It totally conflicts because, I get in the end, the employee is paid $700,000 in damages and back wages, which should be. I mean, look, we have handled horrible whistleblower cases where the employer just victimizes whistleblower. But to say, wait, don’t tell the employer, tell the bureaucracy first. That is just a non-starter to me. I just don’t get that logic in this case.

Farron Cousins: Yeah. It is really weird. It’s almost like it doesn’t even give the company the opportunity to fix problems because problems happen. Right? Machinery does break down. Engines do fail. And rather than immediately running to the Coast Guard, it should be, hey.

Mike Papantonio: Fix this.

Farron Cousins: Look, we’ve got some bolts that are starting to come out here, company, let’s take care of this. It’s what we do. It’s part of regular maintenance. But.

Mike Papantonio: In this situation, he did that.

Farron Cousins: Yes, he did.

Mike Papantonio: And he did it. The employer says, okay, okay, okay, we’re gonna take care of it. Nothing happened. Which is, you know, you might expect that every time. But you at least go to the people that have their finger on the pulse that can stop that ship immediately and do something immediately about it. It’s just a bad law. It’s the way it’s written, I think the whistleblower is gonna be protected either way. So I don’t quite understand this.

Farron Cousins: And in this case, the employee did everything right. The company did everything wrong.

Mike Papantonio: Well, that’s right. That right. But this falls on the Siemens Protection Act, 1984 Act, and it almost screams out, go to the bureaucrats first, which is what it’s saying. Go to the bureaucrats first. Don’t, you don’t even have to tell the employer, but the employer is controlling that boat. It makes no sense.

Mike Papantonio: The state of Florida has passed a major new law that limits social media use for children banning popular apps for anyone under the age of 14. But can this law stand up in court? Okay. So here’s what you hear in response to this. It makes, again, I gotta look at it from a constitutional standpoint. They’re saying, oh, this Wasserman, they interviewed some guy named Wasserman about the First Amendment. Yeah. It’s a First Amendment issue. But you begin every analysis by saying, is there a standard where the First Amendment issue can be trumped? Where you can say, yeah, First Amendment’s important, but health, safety and welfare concerns are more important than that. And so for this, to say that this is simply gonna be analyzed from a First Amendment standpoint is absurd. It’s a ridiculous thing for this guy to say. Pick it up from there.

Farron Cousins: Yeah. So what we’ve got in the state of Florida, bipartisan legislation, Democrats and Republicans passed this legislation saying, if you’re under the age of 14, social media apps are off limits. 14 and 15 years old, you do it with parents’ consent, 16 and up, no problem there. So that’s the law and it goes into effect January 1st, 2025. And the critics of the law, which in spirit, I like what the law’s doing because I think it’s necessary. But the critics of it are, like you said, they’re saying, no, it’s a First Amendment issue. But at least, to the only time I’ll probably ever credit the government here in Florida, they’re saying, no, listen, we have a duty to protect, like you say, with the police powers.

Mike Papantonio: Health, safety and welfare, police powers. Right.

Farron Cousins: And we have reports off the charts of children being harmed by these social media apps. You and I have sat here and talked about some of the horrific things happen.

Mike Papantonio: Oh, dozens of stories.

Farron Cousins: So that’s why, listen, I don’t think this is a violation of First Amendment rights when you consider the police powers, and I think they may be going after the wrong group. It’s not the kids. They really should be going after the social media companies themselves. But if we can’t get that at this point, maybe this is the route to go.

Mike Papantonio: Yeah. I thought the reporter did a terrible job on this story. He focused on one professor, Wasserman, and Wasserman tells the New Times, well, this is all a First amendment. Well, it’s not. Okay. It’s not. Otherwise, how would you even control pornographic material? How would you control voting? How would you control driver’s license? How would you control alcohol or cigarettes? There’s some things that fall squarely within health, safety and welfare. And they fall under something called strict scrutiny. Okay. First Amendment is what you would regard as, when an appellate court looks at it, they look at it with strict scrutiny. The assumption is that this violates the First Amendment. You start there, but you say, wait, is there something that overpowers that? And of course, we wouldn’t have any of these laws. We wouldn’t have cigarettes. We wouldn’t have voting. We wouldn’t have alcohol where we’re driven by age. We’d have none of this. If all you said, or driving, you’d have none of it if you just said, okay, well, let’s look at the First Amendment aspect of something like pornography, or let’s look at the First Amendment of, you can virtually say that anything, you have some First Amendment in your expression, your desire to do something. But it’s just a wrong analysis. I don’t know. I think that this was defeated in Arkansas, wasn’t it?

Farron Cousins: Yeah. And Utah’s got one that’s currently going through the courts. But again, they’re staying to the strict First Amendment, yes or no questions. They’re not trying to make the good argument, which is, we have seen the data, we have victims that we could call to come and testify here if you want us to. We have to keep these children safe. And again, the better way to keep them safe is to crack down on the perpetrators and on the social media networks themselves. They’re the ones allowing this to happen. But they have all the power, and we’re not gonna hold them accountable.

Mike Papantonio: It’s just, what bothers me is every knucklehead who thinks that there’s a constitutional protection to anything always being First Amendment, you know, that. And it’s just not true. There’s always a balancing act between what we call a strict scrutiny issue. Might be gender, might be First Amendment, free speech. So all of these, or race, those are when a court gets that, they say, okay, we have to look at this with a presumption that this is going to be a problem from a constitutional. But this Wasserman, it was like a 10th grade analysis. And this article doesn’t even look at the other side and really explore the other side.

Farron Cousins: You know, it is interesting you bring that up, because I think a lot of people think the First Amendment is absolute, steadfast.

Mike Papantonio: All the time. Yeah.

Farron Cousins:: Just total. When I was doing pre-law, I had to take a course for a whole semester, First Amendment freedoms. And the entire course, every, three days a week was only about all of the exceptions

Mike Papantonio: Exactly.

Farron Cousins: To the First Amendment. And that was just one course on that. So.

Mike Papantonio: Yeah. So they always, if you notice in these articles, they always call some professor who hasn’t really practiced law at all. They teach some law school, willing to say, well, what about First Amendment? It’s just like that knee jerk reaction This is a case that, I don’t know, man. I think the analysis is a tough call.