Abstract
Marginalized online creators are vulnerable to attacks using digital means of harassment including traditional swatting as well as the abuse of wellness checks that can act as swatting. Enabled by permissive Supreme Court 4th Amendment jurisprudence, malignant online actors have taken advantage of the ramshackle system of wellness checks that sends armed police officers with little training and even less compassion to the doors of individuals with reported mental health crises. This Note focuses on two polarizing influencers who have been subject to wellness check swatting after being very open about their mental health statuses online. This Note argues that we should not attempt to solve the problems inherent in wellness checks with federal anti-swatting legislation because it has already been passed at the state level with no success. Rather, localities should invest in creating abolitionist alternatives to the police wellness checks system that are less vulnerable to abuse from bad actors, and the Supreme Court should abolish the 4th Amendment emergency aid exception that allows the police to enter and search the homes of individuals with mental health crises without a warrant.
Recommended Citation
Tara Blackwell,
How to Punish Your Least Favorite Online Influencer: Wellness Checks as Swatting and their Disproportionate Impact on Marginalized Creators,
30 Wash. & Lee J. Civ. Rts. & Soc. Just. 291
(2023).
Available at: https://scholarlycommons.law.wlu.edu/crsj/vol30/iss1/10
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