The liberals’ crusade against free speech consists largely of trying to except “hate speech” from First Amendment protection, followed by characterizing pretty much anything they don’t like as “hate speech.” This effort has made considerable headway in the thinking of ill-educated people, especially recent college graduates. But it has encountered a stone wall in the courts.
The most recent instance is yesterday’s decision by Judge Andrew Carter of the Southern District of New York. The case challenged a recently-enacted New York statute, the “Hateful Conduct Law.” Plaintiffs included law professor Eugene Volokh and Rumble Canada.
The Hateful Conduct Law is odd: its drafters apparently tried to avoid constitutional challenge by defining its duties narrowly. It says that operators of social media networks have to 1) create a complaint mechanism, and 2) define a policy relating to conduct that vilifies, humiliates, or incites violence against the usual groups or individuals.
Judge Carter granted plaintiffs’ motion for a preliminary injunction against enforcement of the law, holding that plaintiffs are highly likely to succeed on the merits.
The decision is embedded below. I encourage you to read it. These brief excerpts sum up the essence of the court’s holding:
Even regulations that seek to regulate speech “that insult[s], or provoke[s] violence, on the basis of race, color, creed, religion, or gender” have been found to run afoul of the First Amendment because they constitute content and viewpoint-based regulation of protected speech.
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Here, the law clearly implicates protected speech—namely hate speech—by requiring a disclosure of the Plaintiffs’ policy for responding to complaints of hateful content.
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Banning conduct that incites violence is not protected by the First Amendment3, but this law goes far beyond that.
The court’s holding is clearly consistent with prevailing Supreme Court precedent. One may wonder why liberals continue to beat their heads against the wall of constitutional jurisprudence. Most likely, they are playing a long game. They may consider that they are only a Democratic administration or two away from having a Supreme Court that is hostile to speech that diverges from liberal dogma. And they may be right.
Here is the decision:
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