Judge blocks New York social media 'hate speech' law over First Amendment concerns
A federal judge has halted the enforcement of New York law to counter online hate speech, believing that the measure may threaten First Amendment rights.
United States District Court Judge Andrew L. Carter granted a preliminary injunction on Tuesday against New York General Business Law Section 394-ccc, also known as the Hateful Conduct Law, on behalf of notable blogger and professor Eugene Volokh.
Carter, an Obama appointee, believes that "even if the law was truly aimed at reducing the instances of hate-fueled mass shootings, the law is not narrowly tailored toward reaching that goal."
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"It is unclear what, if any, effect a mechanism that allows users to report hateful conduct on social media networks would have on reducing mass shootings, especially when the law does not even require that social media networks affirmatively respond to any complaints of 'hateful conduct,'" ruled Carter.
"In other words, it is hard to see how the law really changes the status quo — where some social media networks choose to identify and remove hateful content and others do not."
Carter also felt that the law "could have a profound chilling effect on social media users and their protected freedom of expression," as it fails to properly define what constitutes hate speech. The judge added that the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution protects from state regulation some speech that may be deemed "hateful."
However, Carter rejected the argument that the law violated the Communications Decency Act, which states in part that no provider of an online service will be considered the speaker of content on their platform.
"The law does not impose liability on social media networks for failing to respond to an incident of 'hateful conduct,' nor does it impose liability on the network for its users own 'hateful conduct,'" Carter continued.
"The law does not even require that social media networks remove instances of 'hateful conduct' from their websites. Therefore, the Hateful Conduct Law does not impose liability on Plaintiffs as publishers in contravention of the Communications Decency Act."
Volokh, who runs The Volokh Conspiracy legal blog, was represented in part by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression and was joined by the social media platforms Rumble and Locals in the litigation against New York Attorney General Letitia James.
FIRE argued that the legislation unlawfully compels everything from blogs to social media platforms to silence unpopular opinions and adopt the state's "preferred definition of hate speech or be drafted into New York's 'speech police.'"
Additionally, FIRE contends the law "chill[s] online discourse, stifling the constitutionally protected speech of platforms and users alike."
"New York tried to single out particular ideological viewpoints by requiring me and other platform operators to have policies for dealing with those viewpoints," said Volokh, as quoted by FIRE on Wednesday.
"That's just as unconstitutional as the government targeting 'unpatriotic' speech or anti-police speech or whatever else. I'm grateful that this decision makes clear that such viewpoint-based attempts at government regulation are unconstitutional."
In response to a mass shooting last May at a Buffalo supermarket in which a male white supremacist shooter murdered 10 African Americans, state lawmakers passed a bill that would target hate speech on social media platforms.
New York state Sen. Anna Kaplan, who introduced the bill, stated at the time that her legislation "will empower social media users to keep virtual spaces safer for all by providing clear and consistent reporting mechanisms to flag hate speech."
The law defined "hateful conduct" as "the use of 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."
The measure required social media platforms to "provide and maintain a clear and easily accessible mechanism for individual users to report incidents of hateful conduct."
"Such mechanism shall be clearly accessible to users of such network and easily accessed from both a social media networks' application and website, and shall allow the social media network to provide a direct response to any individual reporting hateful conduct informing them of how the matter is being handled," the law continued.
The law clarified that social media platforms should not impose anything that "adversely affects the rights or freedoms of any persons" and does not seek to "increase liability of a social media network for anything other than the failure to provide a mechanism" to report hate speech.
