UpSolve Delivers, and the Legal Monopoly Shrinks

Well, THAT was fast.

It was only the end of January when UpSolve filed its lawsuit against New York and its overly-broad unlicensed practice of law — or “UPL” — law.

I shouldn’t be too hard on the Empire State; every state has horrifically overbroad UPL laws. And what do these laws do? First, they make a criminal out of anyone who wants to provide legal services but is not a lawyer. And second, they create a speech and access to justice-chilling definition of “legal services.” UPL rules seem designed for maximum uncertainty, ensuring that the monopoly for lawyers it creates is as wide as possible.

The natural result is that the UPL monopoly reaches basic legal advice, like explaining to someone how to navigate a custody hearing, or how best to fill out a government form.

But such advice is speech, speech protected by the First Amendment. And it’s intolerable that the government would criminalize the content of speech in this way.

Thankfully, U.S. District Court judge Paul Crotty agrees, having granted UpSolve an injunction from the enforcement of New York’s UPL statute. And while the decision is narrow, it may well have a much longer reach. Judge Crotty writes convincingly of the reasons why a prohibition on providing legal advice is a content-based restriction on speech — and holds that as such, it is subject to strict scrutiny.

Now, it’s true that the old axiom that strict scrutiny is “strict in theory but fatal in fact” is somewhat overstated. Government speech regulations can survive strict scrutiny review. Some elements of UPL — like holding out, court representation, or making certain attestations — may well do so. But I’m thinking the broad prohibition on anyone but lawyers providing legal advice is fatally flawed.

As Judge Crotty notes, in finding that New York’s UPL statute as applied to legal advice falls far short of meeting the bar of strict scrutiny:

Aside from its less-than-compelling interests, the State has failed to narrowly tailor the statute. In fact, the UPL rules could hardly be broader: New York could implement less restrictive alternatives to blanket ban on all unauthorized legal advice.

Important words, and an important warning to every other state. While it could certainly be cut back on appeal, this decision is now the second I’m aware of that has taken a cue from the Supreme Court’s 2018 decision in NIFLA v. Becerra to find that restrictions on professional speech are subject to strict scrutiny.

If I might offer a suggestion to the other state Bars: start working, post-haste, on what a version of UPL would look like that could satisfy strict scrutiny and the First Amendment rights of your states’ citizens. And there’s a bonus to so doing, aside from avoiding the inevitable legal thrashing: you’d be providing a powerful boost to the Access to Justice initiatives that you all spend so much time talking about.

The 11th Circuit Splits With Itself

So we know what a Circuit split is, right? Like where one circuit decides an important legal issue one way, and another circuit decides it in a contrary way?

But what do you call it when a Circuit splits with itself, without even calling it out? Because we’ve got that now in the 11th Circuit, where a panel just decided, in Del Castillo v. Florida Dept. of Health, that occupational licensing restrictions are only incidental effects on speech.

Del Castillo involves the selling of dietary advice without a license. And if it seems strange that the 11th Circuit would find that restricting dietary advice doesn’t offend the First Amendment, it’s probably because just a little over a year ago, the 11th Circuit said, in Otto v. City of Boca Raton (a case striking down bans on “sexual orientation change effort” therapy for minors), that “speech is speech, and must be analyzed as such for purposes of the First Amendment.”

So what gives? It’s not that the Del Castillo panel somehow overlooked Otto; its opinion cites to the case twice, but in a very deceptive way that manifestly ignores its central point. From the first mention of Otto in the Del Castillo opinion:

While the NIFLA Court “refused to recognize professional speech as a new speech category deserving less protection,” Otto v. City of Boca Raton, 981 F.3d 854, 867 (11th Cir. 2020), it also reaffirmed that “states may regulate professional conduct, even though that conduct incidentally involves speech.”

But here’s what the Otto opinion says immediately after the language quoted above:

[In NIFLA], the Court refused to give governments “unfettered power to reduce a group’s First Amendment rights by simply imposing a licensing requirement.” NIFLA, 138 S. Ct. at 2375. The First Amendment’s core speech protections could not very well withstand that sort of restriction-via-professionalization.

Seems like something you’d want to distinguish if you’re in the same Circuit, a year later, holding that licensing requirements are peachy-keen with the First Amendment, no?

Here’s the second cite to Otto in the Del Castillo opinion:

In NIFLA, the Supreme Court refused to recognize the “professional speech” doctrine. See Otto, 981 F.3d at 861 (explaining that the Supreme Court in NIFLA “rejected an attempt to regulate speech by recharacterizing it as professional conduct”)

Uh, right – and the latter part probably should have been addressed. As should what appears right before this quote in the Otto opinion:

Our Court, though, has already rejected the practice of relabeling controversial speech as conduct. In a case quite similar to this one, we laid down an important marker: “the enterprise of labeling certain verbal or written communications ‘speech’ and others ‘conduct’ is unprincipled and susceptible to manipulation.”

Alrighty! And then that’s exactly what the Del Castillo panel proceeds to do, finding that dietary advice isn’t really expression:

Assessing a client’s nutrition needs, conducting nutrition research, developing a nutrition care system, and integrating information from a nutrition assessment are not speech. They are “occupational conduct”; they’re what a dietician or nutritionist does as part of her professional services. The profession also involves some speech—a dietician or nutritionist must get information from her clients and convey her advice and recommendations. But, to the extent the Act burdens speech, the burden is an incidental part of regulating the profession’s conduct.”

That’s nonsense, of course. It doesn’t pass the straight-face test. “Incidental burdens on speech” are things like informed consent requirements, disclosures, or the need to submit paperwork in a prescribed form. Here, the court takes all of the preparation and research that goes into expression as the “core” and then classifies all of the expression itself as “incidental.”

Imagine this quote applied to the regulation of journalists:

Assessing a community’s news needs, conducting research, outlining a story, and integrating information from witnesses are not speech. They are “occupational conduct”; they’re what a journalist does as part of her professional services. The profession also involves some speech—a journalist must get information from interview subjects and convey her findings to the public. But, to the extent the Act burdens speech, the burden is an incidental part of regulating the profession’s conduct.”

Ridiculous, right? But that’s where the 11th Circuit seems to be on this case — anything goes as long as the government licenses it. Given the obvious conflict with Otto — and the Del Castillo panel’s abject failure to grapple with it forthrightly — let’s hope for en banc review and a reversal.

11th Circuit: Strict Scrutiny for Professional Speech Ban

Counseling services designed to get people to change their sexual orientation or gender identity have a deservedly gross reputation. Grosser still is their predominant orientation toward children, who frequently aren’t the ones choosing to undertake such counseling. 

In response, a number of jurisdictions have imposed laws prohibiting conversion therapy (or “sexual orientiation change efforts” – SOCE) with respect to minors. Among these were Boca Raton and Palm Beach County, Florida. 

It’s fairly well-recognized that any such ban as applied to adults would be unconstitutional. However, bans of SOCE for minors have had more success in the courts. Not so for these Florida jurisdictions. On November 20th, the 11th Circuit issued its decision in Otto v. City of Boca Raton, finding that these ordinances violated the First Amendment rights of the SOCE practitioners who challenged the ordinances. 

My interest in the case is primarily how deep a dive it takes into the interplay between the First Amendment and professional speech regulation. As the court notes, a ban on SOCE is clearly a content-based speech regulation, so strict scrutiny would normally apply. But what of the idea that this is a “professional speech” regulation, subject to some lower standard of review? The court makes short work of this:

The Supreme Court has consistently rejected attempts to set aside the dangers of content-based speech regulation in professional settings: “As with other kinds of speech, regulating the content of professionals’ speech `pose[s] the inherent risk that the Government seeks not to advance a legitimate regulatory goal, but to suppress unpopular ideas or information.'” Nat’l Inst. of Fam. & Life Advocs. v. Becerra, 138 S. Ct. 2361, 2374 (2018) (alteration in original) (quoting Turner, 512 U.S. at 641).

Okay, but what about if we approach the professional-speech-is-special thesis from behind, with the argument that this kind of speech — speech that is instrumental to the professional service being delivered — is not expression, but rather simply conduct? 

No chance. 

We can understand why they would make this claim; if the ordinances restricted only non-expressive conduct, and not speech, then they would not implicate the First Amendment at all. Our Court, though, has already rejected the practice of relabeling controversial speech as conduct. In a case quite similar to this one, we laid down an important marker: “the enterprise of labeling certain verbal or written communications `speech’ and others `conduct’ is unprincipled and susceptible to manipulation.” Wollschlaeger, 848 F.3d at 1308 (quotation omitted). 

LOL; that’s an understatement! Wollschlaeger was the much litigated “Docs & Glocks” case, involving a Florida statute that restricted the rights of doctors to ask questions about patients’ gun ownership.

The court goes on to note:

The local governments are not entirely wrong when they characterize speech-based SOCE as a course of conduct. SOCE, after all, is a therapy, and plaintiffs say they want to “engage” in it. But plaintiffs have the better of the argument. What the governments call a “medical procedure” consists—entirely— of words. As the district court itself recognized, plaintiffs’ therapy “is not just carried out in part through speech: the treatment provided by Drs. Otto and Hamilton is entirely speech.” If SOCE is conduct, the same could be said of teaching or protesting—both are activities, after all. Debating? Also an activity. Book clubs? Same answer. But the law does not require us to flip back and forth between perspectives until our eyes hurt. Our precedent says the opposite: “Speech is speech, and it must be analyzed as such for purposes of the First Amendment.” Wollschlaeger, 848 F.3d at 1307 (alteration omitted).

Those who closely follow the Supreme Court’s First Amendment jurisprudence will recall that in NIFLA the Court stopped just short of finding that professional speech regulations must pass strict scrutiny. The 11th Circuit felt no such constraint:

And because NIFLA directly criticized Pickup and King—cases with very close facts to this one—we do not think there is much question that, even if some type of professional speech might conceivably fall outside the First Amendment, the speech at issue here does not. But to whatever extent NIFLA failed to bind us with a direct holding on that point, we now make that holding ourselves. These ordinances are content-based regulations of speech and must satisfy strict scrutiny. (emphasis added)

I think this is the first affirmative statement from a federal appellate court that core professional speech is fully protected by the First Amendment; I doubt it will be the last.

Going on to apply strict scrutiny to the regulation at issue, the court — unsurprisingly — found that the statute did not pass muster. For despite the strong feelings on this particular topic, the state had marshaled little evidence that SOCE is actually harmful. The centerpiece report, from the American Psychological Association, concluded that it had “no clear indication of the prevalence of harmful outcomes” among those who had undergone such counseling. And as the court noted, the fact that most psychological professional associations are opposed to such counseling is not, in itself, evidence that the restriction is appropriate:

But that is, really, just another way of arguing that majority preference can justify a speech restriction. The “point of the First Amendment,” however, “is that majority preferences must be expressed in some fashion other than silencing speech on the basis of its content.” R.A.V., 505 U.S. at 392. Strict scrutiny cannot be satisfied by professional societies’ opposition to speech. Although we have no reason to doubt that these groups are composed of educated men and women acting in good faith, their institutional positions cannot define the boundaries of constitutional rights. They may hit the right mark—but they may also miss it.

By way of one obvious example, the American Psychiatric Association long considered homosexuality a mental disorder. As the court observes:

The Association’s abandoned position is, to put it mildly, broadly disfavored today. But the change itself shows why we cannot rely on professional organizations’ judgments—it would have been horribly wrong to allow the old professional consensus against homosexuality to justify a ban on counseling that affirmed it. Neutral principles work both ways, so we cannot allow a new consensus to justify restrictions on speech. Professional opinions and cultural attitudes may have changed, but the First Amendment has not.

Note the emphasis on neutral principles. It’s easy to get outraged about a particular practice, to advocate in favor of seeing it banned, but in such times it’s particularly important to seek neutral principles. Because if “subjective disfavor” is the guiding rule, the shoe can easily be on the other foot:

If the speech restrictions in these ordinances can stand, then so can their inverse. Local communities could prevent therapists from validating a client’s same-sex attractions if the city council deemed that message harmful. And the same goes for gender transition—counseling supporting a client’s gender identification could be banned. It comes down to this: if the plaintiffs’ perspective is not allowed here, then the defendants’ perspective can be banned elsewhere. People have intense moral, religious, and spiritual views about these matters—on all sides. And that is exactly why the First Amendment does not allow communities to determine how their neighbors may be counseled about matters of sexual orientation or gender. (emphasis added)

Given my interests, I can’t help but see the parallels between the regulation struck down in this case and lawyer speech restrictions. Sure, “lawyer speech” isn’t likely to drive the intensity of feeling that “counseling on matters of sexual orientation or gender” does. But both areas of regulation have a strong theme in common. They both feature a class of professionals who have formed strongly-held opinions about what members of the profession can and cannot say — and those opinions are typically based on little more than conjecture.

Applying the neutral principles of the First Amendment doesn’t always result in popular outcomes. But the more we do so, the more we can re-examine long-held beliefs that constrain the ability of members of society to exchange and access ideas. There’s a whole universe of professional speech restrictions that remains unexplored; I’m looking forward to more cases — like this one — that unapologetically take them on.

Attorney Speech Restriction Violates First Amendment

The tide is coming in on professional speech regulation. While we still don’t have an official “professional speech doctrine,” since the 2018 decision in NIFLA v. Becerra, the pace of cases considering – and rejecting – overreaching restrictions on the speech of professionals seems to be quickening. 

The latest example is out of Pennsylvania, where a federal district court just tossed that state’s Rule of Professional Conduct 8.4(g). That rule – which tracks the ABA’s Model Rule – is an expansive anti-harassment and discrimination regulation. It states:

It is professional misconduct for a lawyer to:

***

(g) in the practice of law, by words or conduct, knowingly manifest bias or prejudice, or engage in harassment or discrimination, as those terms are defined in applicable federal, state or local statutes or ordinances, including but not limited to bias, prejudice, harassment or discrimination based upon race, sex, gender identity or expression, religion, national origin, ethnicity, disability, age, sexual orientation, marital status, or socioeconomic status. This paragraph does not limit the ability of a lawyer to accept, decline or withdraw from a representation in accordance with Rule 1.16. This paragraph does not preclude advice or advocacy consistent with these Rules.

The rule also contains a Comment noting that the definition of “the practice of law” includes continuing legal education and conference activities. 

Pennsylvania tried to argue that the rule prohibits “conduct carried out by words,” and not speech itself. The court wasn’t having it. Rule 8.4(g) isn’t a regulation that merely goes to conduct; it explicitly refers to the use of “words” to “manifest bias or prejudice.”

The court went on to note that in the professional context, the only categories of speech that get less First Amendment protection are commercial speech and straightforward disclaimer mandates, and thus that “the speech that Rule 8.4(g) regulates is entitled to the full protection of the First Amendment.”

It remains to be seen whether the Supreme Court will ever adopt an actual professional speech doctrine. But until and unless that day comes, cases like this one will continue to draw in the edges of those areas where regulators have previously felt empowered to impose broad restrictions on occupational speech.

Photography, Discrimination, and the Limits of Speech Regulation

Chelsey Nelson Photography v. Louisville, a federal District Court case decided in August, is our latest entrant in the slowly-expanding string of cases recognizing that strong First Amendment interests are at play when professional speech is regulated.

The case stems from something that most would, at first blush, find uncontroversial: a local ordinance requiring that businesses not discriminate when selling goods and services, or in their advertising for the same (e.g., by claiming they will not sell to certain classes of people, or by stating that such classes of people will be unwelcome at their businesses).

There are good reasons for laws banning discrimination in sales, stemming from historic mistreatment of minorities and the need to ensure access to public accommodations. And it’s understandable why those who object to serving protected categories of people are barred from doing so in most cases. There’s not a connection between a constitutional right and, say, selling gasoline or renting a hotel room, and the law affords the government far more regulatory leeway when dealing with conduct rather than speech. 

But what happens when the goods or services sold are expressive, and the person providing those goods or services objects to employing their expression in a particular way?

To the state of Kentucky, Nelson’s photography is conduct, indistinguishable from selling pancakes or gasoline. To Nelson, her photography is expression – and she objects to a state law requiring her to to express herself in a way that she does not support.[ref]She only wants to take photos of opposite-sex weddings, and has religious grounds for so doing. However, I’m not focusing on the religion aspect of this argument to better hone in on the speech-related concerns.[/ref]

In finding in favor of Nelson, the court engages in a useful discussion of how conduct (such as, say, taking photos) can be “sufficiently imbued with elements of communication” to be covered by the First Amendment. And the court cautions that this is NOT an invitation for any-and-all conduct to be squinted at hard enough that it turns into expression:

Of course, most conduct is not speech, even if it has expressive elements. The Supreme Court has “rejected the view that an apparently limitless variety of conduct can be labeled speech whenever the person engaging in the conduct intends thereby to express an idea.” For example, there’s plenty expressive about road rage, but it’s not speech. Neither is cooking barbecue or running a motel.

Rather, the question turns on whether the conduct in question wordlessly conveys a “particularized message.” Examples noted by the court — all from cases where the Supreme Court held that the conduct in question was expressive — include:

  • nude dancing
  • flag-burning in protest of the 1984 Republican National Convention
  • displaying swastikas
  • taping a peace sign on an upside-down flag to protest the invasion of Cambodia and the killings at Kent State University
  • dressing up as a soldier to criticize the government in an anti-Vietnam War skit
  • wearing a black armband to oppose the Vietnam War
  • conducting a sit-in to protest segregation
  • refusing to salute the flag
  • flying a red flag in support of international communism

Finding the line where conduct becomes expression can be tricky. For example, is refusing to wear a face covering — in defiance of a state COVID health ordinance requiring one — an expressive act? A federal district court in Minnesota recently held no, noting that the conduct regulated by the challenged law must be “inherently expressive.” If the conduct in question requires an explanation to get the point being conveyed, that is strong evidence that the conduct is non-expressive: 

Absent explanation, the observer would not know whether the person is exempt from [the COVID mask law], or simply forgot to bring a face covering, or is trying to convey a political message.

And while the court in Chelsey Nelson v. Louisville holds that line-drawing isn’t hard when it comes to photography — because photography is “unquestionably” protected by the First Amendment — I don’t see this as quite that open-and-shut. The result here seems obvious. Wedding photos directly express a message about an event — a message that may be freighted with specific concerns to some people. But the analysis would likely go the other way in cases where the photos have no connection to the photographer’s choice and do not send a particularized message: for example, a professional real estate photographer who refused to take interior home listing photographs for a class of people she didn’t care for.

Ultimately, as the court notes, professionals, too, are protected by the First Amendment protections for speaker autonomy. Forcing citizens to express ideas “contrary to their deepest convictions” (as Chelsey Nelson would be forced to do, were she required to take photos of same-sex marriages) is “always demeaning,” and such speech compulsion may in fact be even more problematic than bans on speech. It’s good that yet another court has recognized that even professionals have such rights — even if this case shouldn’t be read for the proposition that photographers can discriminate in all instances.

Gorsuch Weighs in on Legal Deregulation

There was a terrific access-to-justice piece in US Today last week, authored by former Colorado Supreme Court Justice Rebecca Love Kourlis and her fellow Coloradan, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch.

Kourlis and Gorsuch hone right in on the source of the problem:

First, lawyers have historically enjoyed the unusual privilege of regulating themselves, under the authority of state supreme courts. In most states, the profession has used this privilege to erect rules allowing only lawyers to provide “legal services”— no matter how basic the job may be.

They also note the barriers the legal profession has long erected to outside investment, and the perversities this creates in eliminating other sources of consumer-friendly competition:

At your local superstore you may be able to find tax-preparation services or an eye doctor, but you will find no help there for even the simplest legal chore.

And in praising the deregulatory efforts recently taken by Utah and Arizona – and the approach to licensing used in the UK – Kourlis and Gorsuch come so close to advocating that legal advice be pried away from the industry’s monopolistic grip:

Someone seeking legal advice about taxes would often prefer a tax-law expert with no law degree over a trial lawyer with no tax experience.

Of course that’s right. The law is vast, and getting vaster all the time. Yet we still limit legal advice to a class of initiates, chosen via a process that tests for little other than diligence and competence in the law’s broadest strokes, and presume that these people — and only these people — can provide advice on all things having to do with “the law.” It’s bonkers.

Arizona Cuts Attorney Regulation

Following on the heels of Utah, Arizona has approved sweeping changes to its rules regulating the practice of law. Once again, I’m pleasantly surprised that a state bar has gone for what I’ve long advocated: eliminating Rules 5.4 (the prohibition on attorney fee-sharing) and 7.2 (all sorts of unconstitutional limits on attorney advertising that predate Bates v. Arizona and which the ABA has inexplicably left in its Model Rules all these years).

Arizona has also opened up its legal monopoly a bit, creating a new license for “legal paraprofessionals.” I’m less sanguine about this change. Professional licensing remains a hurdle, and given our experience with a similar structure here in Washington state, I don’t see a vast market opening up. 

It would have been far better had Arizona simply adopted another simple-but-far-reaching legal regulatory fix: narrowing the definition of “the practice of law” so that anyone could provide legal advice without needing a law license.

I know that’s an idea that sounds crazy to the ears of American lawyers, but it’s long been how things work in the UK, and it doesn’t seem to have harmed consumers or turned London’s solicitors penniless into the streets. It also makes a world of sense from a First Amendment perspective. 

But hey, maybe next year? In any event, kudos to Arizona for taking a step I didn’t see coming until after I’d long hung up my law license.

Recent Cases Bode Well for Professional Speech Rights

Catching up – this summer has seen some important developments on the professional speech front:

Billups Decision Affirmed on Appeal

In Billups v. City of Charleston, a unanimous 4th Circuit panel affirmed the District court’s decision striking down Charleston’s licensing requirement for tour guides. The court dispatches two of the key factors that licensing regulators sometimes cling to: 

  • A regulation barring unlicensed tours implicates the First Amendment even though it does not directly regulate speech, because it prevents people from speaking.
  • It doesn’t matter whether the regulation only applies to paid tours, because — as is commonly understood by those who work in media and publishing; less so by others — profit motive alone does not make speech “commercial” (and thus entitled to less constitutional protection).

As the district court did, the Fourth Circuit passes on determining whether intermediate or strict scrutiny applies to this sort of regulation. However, the opinion notes that in either case, the government has the burden of proving that it actually tried other, narrower, methods to address the problem: 

To prove that a content-neutral restriction on protected speech is narrowly tailored to serve a significant governmental interest, the government must, inter alia, present evidence showing that — before enacting the speech-restricting law — it “seriously undertook to address the problem with less intrusive tools readily available to it.” See McCullen, 573 U.S. at 494. In other words, the government is obliged to demonstrate that it actually tried or considered less speech-restrictive alternatives and that such alternatives were inadequate to serve the government’s interest.”

This is good. Too often, new regulation is just flung against whatever parade of horribles is currently occupying the community’s imagination. The Billups decision is a reminder that those making the laws must do much more when their laws impact speech.

And don’t sleep on the nod to empiricism. Besides taking speech impacts seriously and minimizing harms, the court emphasizes that regulators who want their rules to survive First Amendment scrutiny need to ground those rules in actual data.

Vocational Training is First Amendment-Protected Speech 

In Pacific Coast Horseshoeing School, Inc. v. Kirchmeyer, the 9th Circuit found that a California law prohibiting people from enrolling in vocational training unless they possess certain educational credentials implicates speech rights.

This case nicely illustrates the limitations of state arguments that licensing simply goes to conduct, rather than speech. As the court notes, laws that regulate conduct nonetheless impact speech when the conduct in question consists of communicating a message. And just like the conduct at question in Billups — leading tours — consists of communicating a message, so does the conduct of training people to become farriers. 

A Win for Midwives in Georgia

The Pacific Legal Foundation (which, along with the Institute for Justice, is one of the leading lights in pushing back against overreaching licensing regulation) sued the Georgia Board of Nursing for threatening to fine midwives for . . . referring to themselves as “midwives.” 

Note that these fines weren’t threatened for unlicensed midwives selling their services. Rather, the Board threatened fines against non-practicing midwives who, in the context of providing advice and perspective to the public, merely referred to themselves — accurately — as midwives. 

The case did not result in a final appellate decision. Surely taking heed of the instructive lesson learned by the Engineering Board in Oregon when it tried a similar move, the Georgia Board of Nursing quickly folded up its tent. But in so doing, the Board signed a consent decree that prevents it from pursuing future cases or fines against non-practicing midwives. That should act as a semi-permanent barrier against future unconstitutional behavior by the Board.

Summer of CDA 230

Since my last series of posts on this topic, there has been an epic surge of hot nonsense government proposals on CDA 230.

First up: Donald F. Trump’s executive order purporting to take social media companies to task for, well . . . see for yourself:

Don’s Executive Order in response to this injustice is performative nonsense (read Eric Goldman’s comprehensive overview for more detail), but it is passing strange how “conservatives” have suddenly embraced government control of private speech. I’m old enough to remember when Republicans actually understood how the First Amendment works. Citizens United, anyone? 

Attorney General Bill Barr dutifully followed this up with a set of “Recommendations for Section 230 Reform.” These include broadening takedown requirements, adding disclosures, narrowing CDA 230 immunity for takedown decisions, and specifying that CDA 230 immunity doesn’t apply to antitrust enforcement (I don’t know that anyone thought that it did, but whatever). If you are looking for conservative, small-government principles . . . you’re aren’t going to find them here.

Next up was the Bad Josh, the would-be “Product Manager for the Internet,” Missouri Senator Josh Hawley. Hawley and his crowd of boob-baiting fellow Republican Senators (all of whom are smart enough to know better) introduced an absolute turd of a bill designed to undercut CDA 230. While it has the virtue of only applying to the largest social media sites (thanks for that, I guess), it also doesn’t appear to do anything other than create a cottage industry of nuisance lawsuits. On the bright side, that creates a nice contingency plan for me, should I decide on a late-career switch back to being a litigator.

Closely following Hawley’s offering was the bipartisan PACT Act, sponsored by Hawaii Senator Brian Schatz and South Dakota Senator John Thune. While this bill includes some generally-unobjectionable disclosure standards, it carves back CDA 230 immunity, creates a notice-and-takedown regime, and imposes some truly laughable requirements (like a live telephone call center to respond to inquiries about moderation decisions). 

Oh, and at the same time there’s ALSO the bipartisan, oh-so-self-righteously-named “EARN IT” Act which would, that’s right, make platforms earn their CDA 230 immunity by satisfying a federal commission that they are doing all they can to prevent online sexual exploitation of children. The devil is always in the details when it comes to “think of the children” legislation like this, but it’s a safe bet that putting the thick, sweaty thumb of government on site operations in such a manner doesn’t bode well for innovation or privacy.

All in all, it’s already been a VERY busy summer for CDA 230, and it isn’t even July yet. These proposals are driven by everything from legitimate concern over edge-case issues to frustration at the reach of the First Amendment to bad-faith posturing to find any sort of brickbat to take to “Big Tech.” 

But we must keep in mind that the simplicity of CDA 230 — a too-rare example of government regulation getting out of the way and providing breathing room for new technology — has been a massive factor in enabling the growth of the internet as we know it over the last 24 years. Just because a multiplicity of voices are calling for change doesn’t mean that change is necessary or wise.   

“Strongly Regulate,” Social Media Edition

So earlier this week the President of the United States took to Twitter to baselessly accuse a private citizen of murder (as one does, amidst a pandemic that has claimed 100,000 American lives and throttled the economy). 

The calls for Twitter to ban/censure/otherwise punish Trump came swiftly. And in true Twitter fashion, the company did . . . something entirely different. It tentatively waded into ANOTHER Trump Twitter Shitshow — this one involving the Umber Menace inveigling about the perils of voting by mail. Twitter decided THIS was the fight it was going to take, appending a little linked tooltip disclaimer to the offending tweets: 

This is a form of content moderation, and obviously far short of a takedown or account suspension. And as “flags for offensive content” go, this is pretty mild. Hell, squint at it just a little and it looks like an endorsement of Trump’s claim.

But Trump, naturally, took offense: 

“Strongly regulate or close them down?” What even IS this noise? 

At one time, Republicans cared about the First Amendment. They noted, rightly, that corporations have free speech rights. And you know what? If social media platforms were actually silencing conservative voices, REAL conservatives would say “So what? The government’s got no role to play there.”

Instead, we’ve now got Trump doing his snowflake-swagger routine, echoing the bad faith nonsense that Republican Senators have been spewing for months:

I’ve written at length about why this argument is abject nonsense, and why threats to change CDA 230 aren’t going to achieve the ends Republicans like Rubio purport to be seeking. But here we are — it looks to be a long summer of escalating stupidity.