Lyle Denniston of SCOTUSblog has a recap of oral arguments in John Doe No. 1 v. Reed, the case where petition signers want their names kept private:
Justice Antonin Scalia, using history, sarcasm and political taunts, laid down a barrage of objections Wednesday to a plea that the Supreme Court create a new constitutional right of anonymity for individuals who sign petitions to get policy measures onto election ballots. When he was finished, the strong impression was that it might be exceedingly hard to gather a five-vote majority to establish such a right, even though the plea got the fervent support of Justice Samuel A. Alito, Jr., and some implied help from Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr.
Declaring that the rough-and-tumble of democracy is not for the faint-hearted, what Scalia referred to as the “touchy, feely” sensitivity of some political activists, the Justice said “you can’t run a democracy” with political activity behind a First Amendment shroud. “You are asking us to enter into a whole new field,” Scalia told James Bopp Jr., the lawyer for Washington State signers of an anti-gay rights petition. Politics, the Justice went on, “takes a certain amount of civic courage. The First Amendment does not protect you from civic discourse — or even from nasty phone calls.”
Read more on SCOTUSblog.
Jesse J. Holland of the Associated Press also provides coverage with some additional details.