This is where we’re at. We must be in suspense about whether a judge will object when governments act to repress speech in the name of combatting “misinformation,” “disinformation,” or “hate speech.”
Fortunately, Judge Andrew Carter sees the obvious and has blocked a new New York State law to regulate “hateful” online speech. The law was challenged by anti-censorship video platform Rumble and the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression.
Carter says: “The First Amendment protects from state regulation speech that may be deemed ‘hateful,’ and generally disfavors regulation of speech based on its content unless it is narrowly tailored to serve a compelling governmental interest.”
The alleged “compelling governmental interest” exception is vague and not really consistent with the First Amendment. But the judge otherwise makes sense.
Laws like New York’s constitute a cart blanche for government to repress speech — any speech.
Any controversial words can be labeled hateful, misinformative, disinformative. People have been censored for asseverating that there are only two sexes, that the COVID-19 injections aren’t really vaccines, that the U.S. shouldn’t send more than $100 bazillion to Ukraine, etc.
It’s hatefully misinformative disinformation to proclaim that debates about such questions are impermissible. But people in any case have a right to be wrong; others, the right to refute them.
When the truth is on your side, you have an advantage. But you can’t beam your understanding into the minds of others.
You must be free to speak.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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3 replies on “Court Invokes First Amendment”
I suspect that what the judge means by a restriction “narrowly tailored to serve a compelling governmental interest” is something to prohibit expressive acts such as telling one’s stooges to beat-up the florist who doesn’t pay extortion money. But wording such as that which the judge used invites broad interpretation of “narrow”.
Since the election of Barack Obama, “progressives” have been pursuing a go for broke strategy that has abandoned any pretense of liberalism except in-so-far as some of them still cling to that stolen label.
Hate speech has become anything that undermines the Democrat/libprog narrative.
We must be free enough to shout “theater” at a crowded fire.
The best way to “regulate” hate speech is to allow it to be made, and to refute it vigorously, preferably tying the foolishness to its author and supporters.
The court of public opinion with its verdict by public shaming of foolishness works better than any other option on this issue. It is the only means by which such speech can be controlled without repression by some authority, which will in short order abuse its power.
Indeed, the call for governmental control is nothing more than an attempt to gain the power by which the repression can be accomplished by those who are “in authority” to repress viewpoints which are not their own.