The Supreme Court has continued its Covid-era practice of live-streaming oral argument audio. This allows people to listen and comment on the arguments in real time. It also creates an incentive to disrupt the proceedings as a way of generating media attention.
Yesterday, during oral argument in Bittner v. United States, several protestors interrupted the oral argument to scream their objections to the Supreme Court's Dobbs decision and subsequent state laws limiting or prohibiting abortions. Each of the protestors was swiftly apprehended and removed from the courtroom. SCOTUSBlog reports on the details here,
While the protestors received a decent amount of media attention (which was no doubt their aim), it does not appear they were ultiamtely able to hijack the audio stream. SCOTUSBlog reports "some of Wednesday's protest was apparently redacted from the stream in real time on Wednesday: The stream started late, after the argument had already begun, and the audio briefly went silent during the protest in the first several minutes."
