Posted on 02/21/2023 1:42:07 PM PST by Twotone
ech companies and commenters at public hearings got diametrically opposed rulings last week in First Amendment challenges to the discretion of governments to police, restrain and chill speech.
U.S. District Judge Andrew Carter issued a preliminary injunction against New York's "hateful conduct" law, passed in the aftermath of the livestreamed Buffalo mass shooting to punish broadly defined "social media network[s]" for letting such content spread.
It compels networks to "speak about the contours of hate speech" and chills their users' protected speech "without articulating a compelling governmental interest or ensuring that the law is narrowly tailored to that goal," Carter wrote.
The judge reminded New York that the First Amendment protects hate speech, "no matter how unseemly or offensive" to the state, and noted the "original iteration" of the bill that became law targeted purported misinformation in the wake of the Jan. 6 Capitol breach.
In Florida, U.S. District Judge Roy Dalton upheld a school board "public participation policy" challenged by Moms for Liberty. The judge ruled the policy is content-neutral and wasn't used to shut down the conservative group's members, just interrupt their remarks at meetings.
Though the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals refused to intervene when Dalton rejected Moms for Liberty's motion for preliminary injunction, the group's lawyers at the Institute for Free Speech told Just the News that ruling was limited to abuse of discretion, not the merits, and it will appeal.
An eclectic group of plaintiffs challenged the New York law: Canada-based YouTube competitor Rumble and its subsidiary Locals, a Patreon competitor, as well as UCLA law professor Eugene Volokh, whose ad-supported eponymous legal blog of two decades allows user comments.
(Excerpt) Read more at justthenews.com ...
BFL
Our nation is so screwed up!
conflicting rulings will get it a USSC hearing
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