A federal judge United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, Andrew L. Carter Jr., just delivered a massive win for free speech. Siding with Rumble, the free speech-friendly video service that competes with censorship-heavy YouTube, and Eugene Volokh, a pro-liberty legal blogger, Judge Carter ruled that New York’s “Hateful Conduct Law” was unconstitutional. The basis of his judgment was that the First Amendment protects US citizens from having their speech regulated by the government.
In the ruling, Judge Carter said “The Hateful Conduct Law both compels social media networks to speak about the contours of hate speech and chills the constitutionally protected speech of social media users, without articulating a compelling governmental interest or ensuring that the law is narrowly tailored to that goal.”
Continuing, he went on to say that the law stands in stark opposition to America’s “national commitment to the free expression of speech, even where that speech is offensive or repugnant.”
Judge Carter then went on to point out that the law is clearly meant to regulate speech and force social media networks to crack down on the speech of their users, which is flagrantly illegal because the government can neither limit the protected speech of its citizens nor force supposedly private actors like Facebook or Twitter to do that dirty work for it. In his words:
“The law is clearly aimed at regulating speech. Social media websites are publishers and curators of speech, and their users are engaged in speech by writing, posting, and creating content. Although the law ostensibly is aimed at social media networks, it fundamentally implicates the speech of the networks’ users by mandating a policy and mechanism by which users can complain about other users’ protected speech.”
Volokh, in his argument against the law, said “New York tried to single out particular ideological viewpoints by requiring me and other platform operators to have policies for dealing with those viewpoints. That’s just as unconstitutional as the government targeting ‘unpatriotic’ speech or anti-police speech or whatever else. I’m grateful that this decision makes clear that such viewpoint-based attempts at government regulation are unconstitutional.”
Hochul, when she announced the law, said that “And in the state of New York, we’re now requiring social media networks to monitor and report hateful conduct on their platforms.” Watch that here:
Governor Kathy Hochul (D-NY) announces that New York State is now requiring social media companies to “monitor and report hateful conduct.” pic.twitter.com/63pMu4MkA8
— Arthur Schwartz (@ArthurSchwartz) June 6, 2022
Commenting on that video, people said things like:
“Hateful conduct from all views or just the ones they don’t agree with?”
“Trust me, no one who incites hate toward the US, whites, straights, men, Republicans, Christians or conservatives will be restricted. Democrats will selectively apply the laws, as they always do, to indemnify their own and persecute dissenters.”
“Big Brother is watching…”
Hochul also announced the creation of a unit meant to crack down on “hate speech” at the time, saying “The unit will be responsible for developing investigative leads based on social media analyses focused on radical extremist activities motivated threats [sic] by identifying online locations and activities that facilitate radicalization and promote violent extremism.”
By: Will Tanner. Follow me on Twitter @Will_Tanner_1
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