Californians may now be allowed to see and laugh at “falsehoods” after all.
The Golden State legislature and Governor Newsom will probably fail in their attempt, made in open violation of the First Amendment, to ban certain parody and satire that communicates what they call “falsehoods.” (California hasn’t yet outlawed political novels.)
The battle isn’t over yet. But a court has issued a preliminary injunction against recently passed legislation, declaring that it “does not pass constitutional scrutiny.”
Cited in the ruling is this excellent insight: “‘Especially as to political speech, counter speech is the tried and true buffer and elixir,’ not speech restriction.”
Further, by “singling out and censoring political speech, California hasn’t saved democracy — it has undermined it. The First Amendment does not brook appeals to ‘enhancing the ability of … citizenry to make wise decisions by restricting the flow of information to them.’” Though the judge determined that California has “a valid interest in protecting the integrity and reliability of the electoral process,” the current legislation “lacks the narrow tailoring and least restrictive alternative that a content based law requires under strict scrutiny.”
What could such “narrow tailoring” have consisted of? The repudiated legislation has everything to do with speech that should be unhindered and nothing to do with protecting the electoral process.
AB2839 and a related law, AB2655, were the rapid response of California’s kingpins to an effective parody video of a “Kamala Harris” “ad.” In it, “Harris” explains that she is a vacuous “deep-state puppet.”
The First Amendment protects the right to utter truth, falsehoods, and the kinds of satirical fictions and parodic exaggerations that everybody but opponents of free speech understand to be fictions and exaggerations.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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3 replies on “Censors Slapped at Start”
Why does the comment link on “Down the River” send me to Puppet? No matter. USA Today has also declined to ‘endorse’ a candidate in the presidential election. The coverage in these three papers has been so biased for so many years that any ‘endorsement’ would be redundant. By their lies and slanting of stories, they have made their choices known. It makes no difference to me, since they lost their credibility decades ago.
New York Times bemoans autocracy while supporting an administration that threatens social media unless they censor narratives that expose them; that apparently operated huge political campaign kickback operations; that has arrested and incarcerated those that have disagreed even those the disagreement activities are constitutionally allowed; that has applied law interpretations never used in the history of our foundry to attack a political opponent.
The same administration that has directed members of the DOJ to use law fare to attack that political opposition, and who find themselves, on appeal, to begging the appellate court not to penalize those administration lackeys for their absurd interpretations and use of the judicial system.
“To see what is in front of one’s nose needs a constant struggle.”, said George Orwell. But no struggle to see this moral relativism.
Country, not foundry