Despite a long history of courts ruling that government efforts to regulate speech online harm all internet users and interfere with their First Amendment rights, state and federal lawmakers continue to pass laws that do just that.
Three separate rulings issued in the past week show that the results of these latest efforts are as predictable as they are avoidable: courts will strike down these laws.
Whatever the good intentions of lawmakers, laws that censor the internet directly harm people's ability to speak online, access others' speech, remain anonymous, and preserve their privacy.
The consistent rulings by these courts should send a clear message to lawmakers considering internet legislation: it's time to focus on advancing legislation that solves some of the most pressing privacy and competition problems online without censoring users' speech.
A federal court on Monday blocked Mississippi from enforcing its children's online safety law, ruling that it violates the First Amendment rights of adults and young people.
EFF filed a friend-of-the-court brief in the case that highlighted the many ways in which the law burdened adults' ability to access lawful speech online, chilled anonymity online, and threatened their data privacy.
The court's ruling also demonstrates the peril Congress faces should it advance the Kids Online Safety Act.
Both chambers have drafted slightly different versions of KOSA, but the core provision of both bills would harm internet users-especially young people-by censoring a large swath of protected speech online.
First, the court found that the provision created restrictions on what content could be accessed online and thus triggered strict review under the First Amendment.
The Mississippi court ruled that the state law also ran afoul of the First Amendment because it treated online services differently based on the type of content they host.
The district court ruled that HB 1126's exemption of certain online services based on the content subjected the law to the First Amendment's strict requirements when lawmakers seek to regulate the content of lawful speech.
An Indiana federal court's decision to block the state's age-verification law highlights the consensus that such measures violate the First Amendment because they harm adults' ability to access protected speech and burden their rights to anonymity and privacy.
The Indiana law requires an online service in which more than one-third of the content hosted includes adult sexual materials to verify the ages of its users and block young people from that material.
The Indiana court's decision is in keeping with more than two decades' worth of rulings by the Supreme Court and lower courts that have found age-verification laws to be unconstitutional.
Lawmakers should heed these courts' consistent message and work on finding other ways to address harms to children online, such as by passing comprehensive data privacy laws, rather than continuing to pass laws that courts will strike down.
The Supreme Court's ruling this week in a pair of cases challenging states' online content moderation laws should also serve as a wakeup call to lawmakers.
If a state or Congress wants to pass a law that requires or coerces an online service to modify how it treats users' speech, it will face an uphill battle to being constitutional.
Although EFF plans to publish an in-depth analysis of the decision soon, the court's decision confirms what EFF has been saying for years: the First Amendment limits lawmakers ability to dictate what type of content online services host.
Comprehensive consumer data privacy laws that protect all internet users are both much needed and can be passed consistent with the First Amendment.
The Supreme Court's decision thus reinforces that lawmakers have many paths to addressing many of the harms occurring online, and that they can do so without violating the First Amendment.
This Cyber News was published on www.eff.org. Publication date: Wed, 03 Jul 2024 22:43:05 +0000