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

Bannon’s War Room | Evening Edition | Recorded April 19, 2021 | Video: 48 Minutes 52 Seconds

Show Me

Washington Post’s Josh Rogin On Doctor Fauci’s Connections To the Origins of Covid & The Wuhan Lab | Video: 6 Minutes 20 Seconds

Show Me

Dr. Peter Navarro Discusses Dr. Fauci’s Sketchy Record on AIDS | Video: 2 Minutes 44 Seconds

Show Me

An Open Letter to Dr. Anthony Fauci | Originally Published May 31, 1988

Show Me

Who Is Sean Strubs? | Author Of “Body Counts: A Memoir of Activism, Sex, and Survival” by Sean Strub

Show Me

Whitewashing AIDS History | Dr. Anthony Fauci Is Rewriting History To Disguise His Shameful Role In Delaying Promotion of an AIDS Treatment That Would Have Prevented Tens of Thousands of Deaths In The First Years of the Epidemic.

Show Me

Henry Ford Doctors Pen An Open Letter On Hydroxychloroqine Study

Show Me

The Story Behind the First AIDS Drug

Show Me

Opinion: State Department Cables Warned of Safety Issues at Wuhan Lab Studying Bat Coronaviruses

Show Me

‘We Loved Each Other’: Fauci Recalls Larry Kramer, Friend and Nemesis

Show Me

The Claim That NIH Funded Gain of Function Experiments Is Just A ‘Conspiracy Theory’, Debunked | “Understanding the Risk of Bat Coronavirus Emergence” | NIH Project Number 2R01AI110964-06

Show Me

LISTEN: Police Dispatch Respond To Minneapolis Shooting After Maxine Waters Incited Riot, ’10 To 15 Shots’, ‘White SUV’

Show Me

Marjorie Taylor Greene to Introduce Resolution To Expel Maxine Waters As Democrats Continue To Incite Violence From Both Right and Left | Video: 1 Minute 45 Seconds

Show Me

The Nation Speaks (April 17): As Riots Return, What Lies Ahead; Supreme Court Under Review; Out of Afghanistan | Video: 59 Minutes 13 Seconds

Show Me

Andy Ngo: Antifa, BLM Gearing Up for More Violence as Riot Season Begins

Show Me

Arizona Senate Is Ready for Audit of Maricopa County’s 2020 Election Results to Begin – The Democrats Are In a Panic

Show Me

Video: Facts Matter (April 9): Experts Warn That Illegal Immigrants Are ‘Renting’ Children to Cross the Border

Show Me

EXCLUSIVE: Rep. Chip Roy To Introduce Legislation Making Cartels Terrorist Organizations

Show Me

Abbott Calls for Biden to Label Mexican Cartels as Terrorist Organizations as Texas Ranchers Fend off Criminals

Show Me

California forces Christian college employees to undergo gender identity training at odds with faith

Show Me

‘Completely anti-biblical’: Target selling devotional book that includes prayer to ‘hate white people’

Show Me

This past Easter Message from Joe Biden | “Day 73: While the Border Burns, Your New “Spiritual and Patriotic” Duty Is Here.”

Show Me

VIDEO: 200 Armed Riot Police Break Up Christian Church Service In Canada

Show Me

Pakistan: Further information: Health of death row prisoner in sharp decline: Shafqat and Shagufta

Show Me

Christian women face death penalty in Pakistan for removing sticker from Muslim coworker’s locker

Show Me

U.S. State Department’s Report on Nigerian Violence Leaves Out Jihad

Show Me

Opinion: Joe Biden must recognize Armenian genocides — the past and the present

Show Me

Commentary: Who Funds the Riotous American Left & Why?

Show Me

Liberty University sues Jerry Falwell Jr., seeking millions in damages

Show Me

Jason Whitlock Goes There: White Liberals Are ACTUAL Bigots

Show Me

Christian College Takes Biden to Court Over Trans Mandate

Show Me

UK Christian Leaders ‘Wholly Opposed’ to COVID-19 Vaccine Passports

Show Me

Argentinian Socialist Leader and Pro-Abortion Advocate Dies Days After Aborting Baby

Show Me

On The National Pulse Podcast with Raheem Kassam Discussing Bensman Book and Europe’s Terror Attacks

Show Me

Two Melbourne Men Face Terrorism Charges, Including for Links to ISIS

Show Me

Europe’s Migrant Crisis, Still Yielding Terror, Foretells The Effects Of Biden’s Border-Crossing Boom.

Show Me

Zion man gets more than 13 years in prison for conspiracy to support Islamic State, telling informant ‘I want to see blood flowing’

Show Me

College that censored Islamic terrorism quiz pays professor $155,000 to not sue

Show Me

Report: Mozambique Jihadists ‘Beheading, Skinning, Cutting off Limbs’

Show Me

Dozens Released From Gitmo Who Resumed Terrorism Remain At Large

Show Me