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

Biden twiddles his thumbs as kidnapped journalist is tortured in Belarus

Show Me

Soros Backed Sheriff Penzone and the Maricopa County Board Wouldn’t Turn Over Router Data to AZ Senate Audit – He’s Now Likely Facing Contempt Charges In Another Case

Show Me

Establishment Media Float Another Anti-Trump Conspiracy Theory: ‘Backwards’ Pants Means ‘Dementia’

Show Me

Hypocrisy & Gaslighting 101 | “Twitter declares access to its platform a ‘human right’ despite banning Trump”

Show Me

Nigeria Suspends Twitter Days After President’s Post Removed

Show Me

President Trump Makes A Comeback Speech In North Carolina

Show Me

‘The Bigotry Of Low Expectations’: Horace Cooper Dismisses Biden’s Claim That Black People Can’t Hire Lawyers, Accountants

Show Me

New York Mayoral Candidate, Now Claiming to Be Pro-Trump, Bashed Him as ‘Arrogant’ and Praised Mass Amnesty

Show Me

Governor Newsom Reneges on Promise to Surrender His Emergency COVID-19 Powers

Show Me

Hawaii to drop quarantine, COVID-19 testing once 70% of state is vaxxed

Show Me

SARAH VINE: This war on mothers is feminism’s biggest fight for decades 

Show Me

Over 138,000 Americans Tune in to Watch President Trump’s NC Speech… Before He Even Takes the Stage — Joe Biden Is LUCKY to Get 1,000

Show Me

Dr. Nicole Saphier on Gain of Function Research in Wuhan Lab, Fauci’s Emails, and the Politicization of COVID-19

Show Me

If You Think Intimidation Will Stop, Think Again. The ‘Left’ Doubles Down | “Cancel Culture Works. We Wouldn’t Have Marriage Equality Without It.”

Show Me

Joe Biden Just Banned Investment In CCP Military Firms His Son Hunter Profited From.

Show Me

U.S. Hits 300 Million Doses With Covid in Retreat: Virus Update

Show Me

Britain will lead the way on vaccine passports at the G7 summit

Show Me

Bannon’s War Room | Saturday Edition Hour 1 | Recorded June 5, 2021 | Video: 48 Minutes 38 Seconds

Show Me

Bannon’s War Room | Saturday Edition Hour 2 | Recorded June 5, 2021 | Video: 48 Minutes 38 Seconds

Show Me

Common Sense In A Senseless World | Thomas Sowell Full Documentary | Video: 56 Minutes 57 Seconds

Show Me

BOOM! Mike Lindell Files Fed Lawsuit Against Dominion and Smartmatic For “Weaponizing the court system” To SILENCE Lindell And Others About Election Fraud

Show Me

June 4, 2021 | Nightly News Rebroadcast | Video: 49 Minutes 53 Seconds

Show Me

Clean Elections Court Victory!

Show Me

COVID Origin ‘Worst Cover-Up in Human History’ + More

Show Me

BOMBSHELL: Fauci Kept Funding Peter Daszak’s Wuhan ‘Gain of Function’ Experiments with $7.5 Million after Trump Canceled Grant

Show Me

Iran’s Proxies in Iraq Threaten U.S. With More Sophisticated Weapons

Show Me

The Great Thomas Sowell | John Stossel Retrospective

Show Me

Bannon’s War Room | Morning Edition Hour 1 | Recorded June 4, 2021 | Video: 48 Minutes 28 Seconds

Show Me

Bannon’s War Room | Morning Edition Hour 2 | Recorded June 4, 2021 | Video: 47 Minutes 49 Seconds

Show Me

Bannon’s War Room | Evening Edition | Recorded June 4, 2021 | Video: 47 Minutes 49 Seconds

Show Me

June 3, 2021 | Nightly News Rebroadcast | Video: 54 Minutes 38 Seconds

Show Me

Govt. violates law; stalls Freedom of Info requests for specific Covid-19 Fauci emails

Show Me

Of Course | “Google Diversity Chief Will Remain at Company in Wake of Anti-Semitic Remarks”

Show Me

Media Ignores Heinous Attack on Republican Lawmaker’s Home

Show Me

Justice Department investigating law firm linked to Hunter Biden’s Burisma work

Show Me

NASA aims for 2 new missions to Venus to learn about ‘lost habitable’ world

Show Me

A New York 7-Year-Old Was Accused of Rape. Is Arresting Him the Answer?

Show Me

Trump Admin Covertly Obtained Phone Records Of NYT Reporters

Show Me

Vet’s mic cut off as he spoke of role freed slaves played in Memorial Day origins

Show Me

Rand Paul Doubles Down on #FauciEmails, Calls Fauci ‘Morally Culpable’ for Pandemic

Show Me