Good news for the First Amendment — some judges still seem to believe in it, including even judges appointed by Democrats .
A federal judge blocked enforcement of New York 's law that aims to prevent hate speech on social media, holding that the law violated the Constitution's free speech protections.
On Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Andrew Carter Jr. sided with a legal blog, the Volokh Conspiracy , and video site Rumble , a Peter Thiel -backed online platform known for championing anti-censorship policies and free speech. The plaintiffs claimed in a lawsuit that the law, which would make "hateful conduct prohibited" on social media, would hurt their online services and silence disfavored viewpoints.
Known as the Hateful Conduct Law , the measure sought to define such conduct as using a social media network to "vilify, humiliate, or incite violence against a group or a class of persons on the basis of race, color, religion, ethnicity, national origin, disability, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or gender expression."
Even the ACLU has stopped believing in the First Amendment — much to the shame of everyone involved with that now-useless organization. But although this is just a preliminary decision, Judge Carter, an Obama appointee, seems quite skeptical about this law for the purported aim of making "hateful conduct prohibited" online.
Under the Constitution, Congress can make "no law" limiting the freedom of speech or of the press. This restriction has been incorporated to bind state governments as well. A massive body of Supreme Court jurisprudence holds that government has no business regulating speech based on its content — even, for example, if that means the Illinois Nazis can march in Skokie .
The age of social media means that everyone has a voice and a platform. And that has proven too much for some liberals, who gave up their principles long ago. That's why it's so important to have a stable court system that respects the Constitution and tells trendy woke legislators to go pound sand when they start trying to silence people based on such pretexts — and yes, as recent experience at Twitter shows, such notions of "hate speech" and " disinformation " inevitably become mere pretexts for political censorship.
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