Skip to content

Rumble and Law Professor Sue New York Attorney General to Block Online Hate Speech Law, Calling It a First Amendment ‘Double Whammy’ | Law & Crime

Two days before New York’s online hate speech law is supposed to take effect, the video-sharing website Rumble and a law professor filed a lawsuit against New York Attorney General Letitia James (D) asking a judge to call it vague and unconstitutional.

Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, a non-profit group better known by its acronym FIRE, filed the 46-page complaint on behalf of three plaintiffs: Rumble, the crowd funding site Locals, and Eugene Volokh, the First Amendment scholar behind the legal blog The Volokh Conspiracy.

“New York politicians are slapping a speech-police badge on my chest because I run a blog,” Volokh wrote in a statement. “I started the blog to share interesting and important legal stories, not to police readers’ speech at the government’s behest.”

Passed in the wake of a white supremacist’s mass shooting of Black shoppers at a grocery story in Buffalo, New York, the law forces social media networks to publish a policy explaining how they will clamp down on speech perceived to “vilify, humiliate, or incite violence against a group or class of persons” based on race, color, religion, or other protected categories. FIRE notes that those platforms will be required to create a mechanism to report such speech — and must respond to those complaints.

In their complaint, Volokh’s lawyers say that the law “hangs like the Sword of Damocles over a broad swath of online services.”

“In something of a First Amendment ‘double whammy,’ the Online Hate Speech Law burdens the publication of disfavored but protected speech through unconstitutionally compelled speech — forcing online services to single out ‘hate speech’ with a dedicated policy, a mandatory report & response mechanism, and obligatory direct replies to each report,” the professor’s lawyer Darapana M. Sheth writes in the complaint. “If a service refuses, the law threatens New York Attorney General investigations, subpoenas, and daily fines of $1,000 per violation.”

Earlier this week, Buffalo mass shooter Payton Gendron pleaded guilty to all 25 state charges leveled against him for his terrorist attack, which he live-streamed via a GoPro that he wore to the mass slaughter. He disseminated a racist rant before his shooting spree that articulated his motives, like other white supremacists before him in Christchurch, New Zealand, and elsewhere.

The Empire State law had been intended, in part, to keep racially motivated terrorists from having spaces online to spread their ideologies and stop copycat attacks.

But Volokh says that the New York law goes too far, using such broad language that any attorney general can put bloggers at risk of financial ruin, if commenters share opinions that are disfavored by the state.

Under his interpretation of the statute, the professor says that regulators can go after an atheist perceived to have “vilified” organized religion — or comedian John Oliver for his recent segment on HBO’s Last Week Tonight sending up the British monarchy, which could be construed as a “humiliation” of the U.K.

“There can be no reasonable doubt New York will enforce the Online Hate Speech Law to strong-arm online services into censoring protected speech,” the complaint states. “The Attorney General’s intentions, in fact, could not be clearer; as recited, for example, in an October press release, the Attorney General declared that ‘[o]nline platforms should be held accountable for allowing hateful and dangerous content to spread on their platforms’ because an alleged ‘lack of oversight, transparency, and accountability of these platforms allows hateful and extremist views to proliferate online.’”

Rumble, Locals and Volokh want a federal judge to declare the law unconstitutional on its face as “vague” and “overbroad.” They also seek to a declaration that it runs afoul of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, a statute that has come under fire by politicians across the political spectrum. . . .

Rumble and Law Professor Sue New York Attorney General to Block Online Hate Speech Law, Calling It a First Amendment ‘Double Whammy’ | Law & Crime

Skip The Scoop | Seek Understanding

FDA ordered Johnson & Johnson to throw out 60 million COVID-19 vaccine doses

Show Me

For Kids, Benefits of COVID Vaccine ‘Don’t Outweigh Risks,’ Experts Tell FDA

Show Me

Bannon’s War Room | Morning Edition Hour 1 | Recorded June 11, 2021 | Video: 48 Minutes 47 Seconds

Show Me

Bannon’s War Room | Morning Edition Hour 2 | Recorded June 11, 2021 | Video: 47 Minutes 47 Seconds

Show Me

Bannon’s War Room | Evening Edition | Recorded June 11, 2021 | Video: 48 Minutes 58 Seconds

Show Me

The Secret Meeting that shaped the Natural Origins Narrative | Truth Over News

Show Me

Judicial Watch Files Two New Federal FOIA Lawsuits for Information on COVID and Wuhan Institute of Virology

Show Me

FLASHBACK, May 2020, Democrats Announce Intent to Use ISIS Level Propaganda Against Trump on COVID Messaging

Show Me

Rand Paul: Fauci’s ‘One-Size-Fits-All’ Approach on Vaccine Based on ‘Regular People Aren’t Smart Enough’ to Make Decisions

Show Me

Of Course He Did | ‘Let Us Try To Do This Next Weekend’: Emails Show Fauci Planning To Dine With Friend During Lockdowns

Show Me

J&J CEO: People Will Need COVID Vaccine With Annual Flu Shot for Next Several Years + More

Show Me

Sen. John Kennedy tells Fauci to ‘cut the crap’ after doc lashes out at critics

Show Me

Fauci: To Attack Me Is to Attack Science

Show Me

June 10, 2021 | Nightly News Rebroadcast | Video: 46 Minutes 50 Seconds

Show Me

A Look Back, May 19, 2021 Interview | Dr. Peter McCullough Discusses The Dangers Of The Novel COVID Vaccine And It’s Roll Out | Dr. McCullough: Internist, Cardiologist, Epidemiologist, and Professor of Medicine at Texas A & M College of Medicine, Dallas, TX | Video: 1 Hour 45 Minutes 28 Seconds

Show Me

America’s Energy Gift to Dictators

Show Me

Nearly 800 Reports of Heart Inflammation After COVID-19 Vaccination in US

Show Me

Commentary: ‘Pristine’ Biden Ballots That Looked Xeroxed and Why a Judge Has Georgia Vote Fraud on His Mind

Show Me

Covid-19 origins, the Wuhan lab, US funding, and vaccine connection

Show Me

Native American contractors’ letter seeks end to ‘destructive and unlawful protests’ over Line 3 pipeline

Show Me

When the Bison Return, Will Their Habitat Rebound?

Show Me

How a Questionable Drug Turned into a Goldmine at Taxpayers’ Expense

Show Me

Is NYC Going to Get Schooled Under a New Mayor? 

Show Me

Air Force: Disorientation, faulty GPS caused deadly F-16 crash in Michigan

Show Me

Iranian warships believed to be transporting arms reach Atlantic on route to Venezuela

Show Me

Senator Elizabeth Warren (aka Pocahontas) Shares Link to Stolen Data on Taxes Paid by the Super Wealthy to Push Taxing the Rich

Show Me

Bannon’s War Room | Morning Edition Hour 1 | Recorded June 10, 2021 | Video: 48 Minutes 29 Seconds

Show Me

Bannon’s War Room | Morning Edition Hour 2 | Recorded June 10, 2021 | Video: 48 Minutes 05 Seconds

Show Me

Bannon’s War Room | Evening Edition | Recorded June 10, 2021 | Video: 48 Minutes 59 Seconds

Show Me

Media Matters Retracts After Falsely Claiming Republican Politician Went On ‘White Nationalist, Pro-Hitler Outlet’

Show Me

Study: No COVID-19 Reinfections in Unvaccinated Group

Show Me

How a lenient NYC judge left a reputed gangbanger free to allegedly kill an innocent dad

Show Me

Court reinstates teacher suspended for speaking out against proposed transgender policy

Show Me

Study Shows Hydroxychloroquine and Azithromycin Greatly Improved COVID Survival Rate for Ventilated Patients

Show Me

Keystone pipeline nixed after Biden stands firm on permit

Show Me

Newsom and California lawmakers approved to receive pay raise amid improving economy

Show Me

Ex-Tennessee governor tied to contract hit on Hoffa pal, federal witness

Show Me

Social media CEO considers suing political blogger over Jan. 6 Capitol riot story

Show Me

June 9, 2021 | Nightly News Rebroadcast | Video: 43 Minutes 01 Seconds

Show Me

WATCH: Fauci Claims to “Have No Idea” About His Own, Documented E-Mails with Mark Zuckerberg.

Show Me