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I know many HN commenters have a strong anti-public-service bent, but consider this angle: if the government is providing your Internet service, then your servi

I know many HN commenters have a strong anti-public-service bent, but consider this angle: if the government is providing your Internet service, then your service is protected by the constitution. The bar for restricting what you can access, and for what reasons your service can be cancelled, becomes much higher when it's governed by the constitution instead of the whims of a private media company with a massive conflict of interest.

jtdev 6y ago
How does the constitution come into play here? The government doesn’t really have a great track record for being worthy of blind trust.
- mrkstu 6y ago
  They cannot drop you as a customer for what you 'say' digitally (or IRL.) You cannot be 'cancelled.' Not sure if that has happened previously on the individual level, vs the organizational/corporate level though. Technically, though, if they offer commercial service, the organizational/business orgs taking it up would be protected completely in any of their speech (other than things like child porn.)
  - rtkwe 6y ago
    How many people if any are actually losing internet access? The closest I've seen is people having their hosting providers drop them.
- jballer 6y ago
  TL;DR because the Constitution was written to protect us from the government, there is a lower bar to sue and win under both federal law and constitutional challenges. For example, the Fourteenth Amendment protects against discrimination by States, not private actors: https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution-conan/amendment-14/section-1/state-action https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution-conan/amendment-14/... And note 1338 calls out that the federal laws prohibiting businesses from discriminating against individuals are instead rooted in Congress's broad latitude to regulate interstate commerce. And here's another similar reference: > As a general rule, the Constitution does not give power to the federal government to pass laws to protect people against private actions. For example, the Equal Protection Clause guarantees equal protection for all – it protects against discrimination. Under this protection, the federal government may pass laws to enforce this guarantee. However, while Congress may pass a law to regulate states or other public actors, it may not pass a law to regulate private citizens. Your police department cannot discriminate against you on account of your race. However, your neighbor in the house down the block can be as bigoted as he so desires. https://constitutionallawreporter.com/amendment-14-01/the-question-of-government-action/ https://constitutionallawreporter.com/amendment-14-01/the-qu...
giantg2 6y ago
That's a bit of a leap. Rights can be infringed regardless of whether the government or another entity is involved, if it's done the right way (Edit). In this case, the constitution does not mention any right to broadband internet. It does guarentee rights under the first amendment which could be applicable here. The same way that corporations could restrict that right would likely be used by the government - contract law and a service agreement. This is similar to the government placing restrictions on people when they sign up for the military (Edit). The government also has a conflict of interest when it comes to things like surveillance.
- jessaustin 6y ago
  The Constitution mentions no right to drive cars. Nevertheless, attempts to limit drivers' licences by arbitrary criteria would receive a cold reception in the courts. The government is required to treat everyone with due process.
  - giantg2 6y ago
    That's not true at all. There are states that restrict concealed carry permits by issuing on a may-issue basis, which uses arbitrary criteria. This shows that the courts don't care.
    - adamsea 6y ago
      Is it that the courts don’t care or that you yourself disagree with their ruling and think it was wrong? Which would be fine but isn’t the same thing.
      - giantg2 6y ago
        It depends on which courts we are talking about. For example, a court in NJ may ignore a case but federal courts may take it up. You can even have split circuits depending on the part of the country the cases were filed in. This leads to one court stating that something is a federally protected right, while a different circuit may rule th opposite. In some of these cases, SCOTUS may decline the case. In that event, you have part of the country being guaranteed a right while the other part might not be, and I believe that would violate equal protection under the law. Not settling the matter in this sort of scenario would in my eyes be "not caring".
dantheman 6y ago
Has anyone who's been violating the constitution with regards to NSA, DEA, FBI metadata collection and hacking been punished? Have the programs been stopped - how can we know/verify? Has James Clapper been punished for lying under oath to congress? Is he paraded around as an example of what happens when those in senior leadership have violated the rights of millions or is still acceptable to interview on TV or have politicians reference?
- dragontamer 6y ago
  Except this is community broadband. There's basically no way a city could create the NSA on their own. If you think a city is violating your constitutional rights, you sue the city (which is way easier than suing the State or National Government). With luck, you can get national forces on your side. If anything, if the city is violating civil rights, you might be able to get FBI on your side (Department of Justice after all) to leverage the heavy-lifting.
1123581321 6y ago
Municipal governments are subject to the same cost-consistency-performance tradeoffs as a private company. In a situation where a private ISP would not have been able to meet its obligations, the cost to force a government ISP to meet them would not obtain a meaningfully better outcome. Additionally, there is no constitutional right to municipal utility services.
- ClumsyPilot 6y ago
  This argument does not apply if the re is no competition, local telcos have a comfy monopoly / duopoly and collect the same fees without making any further investments
  - 1123581321 6y ago
    We would expect neither a public nor private monopoly to invest magnanimously in an effective way. Keep in mind ISPs still charge for multiple tiers of service, add-on products, etc. So asking for investment beyond that would be beyond consumer demand. That is something that could be mandated by ordinance, but would be scrutinized just as any disproportionately large budget section would be.
mastax 6y ago
This made me wonder if the bill of rights applies to state, local governments. According to Wikipedia, yes. A series of court decisions in the 1920s (re-)interpreted the 14th amendment as applying the bill of rights to state governments.
- gwright 6y ago
  This is the "incorporation doctrine". It has evolved over time for individual elements of the Bill of Rights. Here is a nice timeline: https://billofrightsinstitute.org/educate/educator-resources/landmark-cases/incorporation/ https://billofrightsinstitute.org/educate/educator-resources...
rayiner 6y ago
Except my provider isn’t doing any of those things. (I have fiber via Comcast but I’ve also got Verizon available.) Meanwhile, our other public services kinda suck. I used to ride the Metro to work before pandemic hit. It was designed in the 1970s to be a fully automated system, but the equipment was allowed to deteriorate so much that the automation was turned off permanently in 2009. What used to be a smooth, fast ride when I grew up in DC in the 1990s is now a slow, jerky one. Trip times are also 20-25% longer than they used to be. What used to be 6 minute headways is now 8, because it was too hard to keep up 6 with the manual system. And DC is a very well funded system. Government Internet would be built by basically the same people. Why would I expect it to be any better?
- Eridrus 6y ago
  I think the evidence points to municipal internet being far better managed than transit infrastructure. Not all government projects are doomed to failure and IMO we should learn more from those that are because the government having no capacity to actually do anything is not good for us since the demands for governments to do things are not going to go away.
_greim_ 6y ago
> The bar for restricting what you can access, and for what reasons your service can be cancelled, becomes much higher when it's governed by the constitution instead of the whims of a private media company with a massive conflict of interest. Just to note: the government has whims and conflicts of interest also, as demonstrated over the last decade or two with recent wild swings in high-level elected office and shifts in the courts.
- grecy 6y ago
  Sure, but irrelevant of who or which party is in charge, they can't mess with the constitution.
  - throwaway0a5e 6y ago
    They just ignore it in different ways.
  - _greim_ 6y ago
    Your outcome will be decided by judges who are selected by politicians, and who interpret and emphasize the constitution in different ways.
    - ClumsyPilot 6y ago
      Which are also elected for life and are independent of said politicians
- dfxm12 6y ago
  That doesn't really follow. People vote for who is in elected office and for some judges. Elected officials also have to re-earn their job every 2-6 years, or thereabouts. People have no say in who runs a private media company or how.
  - _greim_ 6y ago
    The populace has different levers for different controllers. Votes for politicians and dollars for private firms. In both cases the lever is imperfect and we don't always get optimal results.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
DaniloDias 6y ago
Do you want the local government to have a direct tap into where you spend your time online?
- adamsea 6y ago
  As opposed to AT&T / Comcast? Whoever it is I would like their behavior to be meaningfully regulated under the law.
  - nostromo 6y ago
    Yes, as opposed to them. The government can throw you in jail, seize your assets, raise your taxes; AT&T can't. With that extra power comes additional scrutiny.
    - ClumsyPilot 6y ago
      Private firms have sold sensitive location data to anyone who asks, including borderline criminal bailiffs / 'bountyhunters'. They have left databases exposed for the whole world to see, enabling billions of losses in identitfy theft. And they have suffered basically no consequences. The evidence so far suggests that government agencies are better stewards of personal data.
      - DaniloDias 6y ago
        Private firms are less incentivized to snoop on you than nosy small town mayors or city councils. I am too old to hold politicians in high regard.
        ClumsyPilot 6y ago
        Can you backup your claims? Many places have government broadband or phone, has there been abuse on the scale of US carrirers selling location data?
        adamsea 6y ago
closeparen 6y ago
Federal funding for internet connections at schools and libraries specifically requires content filtering. They can get away with it because it's for children. I would not be surprised if you see something similar to what was tried in the UK - block pornography by default and require an embarrasing support phone call to lift the block.
- Shivetya 6y ago
  On top of that there have been more than a few stories of over zealous school systems who have demands of computers used to access online content. So one would expect that a similar entry point would be uses to restrict content if not sites. The real threat is tracking that will exist but "wink wink" protected under the rule of requiring a court order to reveal; or if your in the political arena just someone who doesn't like you and leaks it. At least with a private provider there is a remote possibility of suing them or using the government against them. Against the government there are just too many barriers and would require very robust legislation to protect us.
JumpCrisscross 6y ago
> if the government is providing your Internet service, then your service is protected by the constitution I don’t know how convincing this argument is. Certainly local law enforcement will, on average, have an easier time accessing these data. A better argument is this is a temporary measure. Broadband is expensive to build out. Once built, it is cheaper to operate. I imagine these municipal operations will be built well and privatised when the next municipal finance downturn rears its head.
robertlagrant 6y ago
> I know many HN commenters have a strong anti-public-service bent Welcome to a community that powers a lot of open source software, which powers a lot of the world. > if the government is providing your Internet service, then your service is protected by the constitution Nope. Did you know the constitution is a document, and not "stuff the government currently pays for"?
- ClumsyPilot 6y ago
  > Welcome to a community that powers a lot of open source software, which powers a lot of the world. Is that actually accurate? My impression is intersectuon between tech entrepreneurs and folks that maintain linux kernel is not that high.
  - robertlagrant 6y ago
    Multiple category errors here.
supercoffee 6y ago
I can totally understand people’s reluctance to government run internet. The biggest argument I see is that the government can compete unfairly against private companies because they don’t have to make a profit. Usually when this debate about government run internet comes up, there’s two discrete options: the private sector ISP and the government run ISP. However, there’s an option that rarely gets mentioned: the public infrastructure + private ISP model. I used to live in middle-of-nowhere central WA, and they had fiber internet all the way back in mid 2000’s. This was a town of <20k people. Other smaller towns around the region also had access to fiber as well. Basically it worked like this: the county public utilities district was responsible for laying the fiber and connecting it to the building. Once the fiber is hooked up, you can call any one of a dozen or so ISPs to provide you with service. As a side note, because of this relationship between the ISPs and the public utilities district, some ISPs also operated point-to-point wireless networks to reach customers outside of the fiber network. The ISPs would typically place a tower with several radios at an existing customer’s site, in exchange for free service. These tower sites were usually connected directly to fiber for minimal latency. I mention this because I don’t see how these wireless networks would have been viable without a public fiber network backing them.
- stjohnswarts 6y ago
  "Unfairness" has to be put in context. How many people benefit by working for the cable company? How many people would benefit by universal access to fiber/internet? I think we all know the answer there.
- vkou 6y ago
  Why would I, as a citizen, give two figs about fair competition? All I want is good service, on the cheap. If the government can provide good service, and have zero-profit margin, that's fantastic. That's actually the best possible outcome. If the government service sucks, then their zero-profit margin should not be a significant enough competitive advantage to drive out competitors. In addition to all that, all the criticisms of the zero-profit margin model fall apart in a world where VCs and conglomerates frequently operate local services at a loss, in an effort to capture market share (So that they can later raise prices).
natchy 6y ago
well now I'm hearing more of plans to "begin healing" and to combat hate. I see the government using "hate" as a reason to implement backdoors and monitor citizens, just like the Patriot Act. Whenever I bring this up, I'm accused of being "for hate", when I really just am a big fan of Snowden and don't people to give up safety for security. Most people would see a measure to combat hate on the internet and vote for it, not realizing its giving the govt the right to monitor all data or crack down on something that isn't even hateful (e.g. Free Palestine, Hong Kong etc). Give the local "community government" the right to run the internet and now the federal govt will be spidered throughout all local govt ISPs. > The bar for restricting what you can access, and for what reasons your service can be cancelled, becomes much higher when it's governed by the constitution I wouldn't put it past Biden or Harris to issue and executive order for the sake of "hate speech". I couldn't imagine Sanders or even Trump doing that.
stjohnswarts 6y ago
That's not correct. It's not protected by the Constitution, it is protected by the laws passed. The only way it could be "protected by the constitution" would be a judge saying "this falls under section xyz of the constitution. so shall it be". That would obviously probably be overturned in short order but it's really the only way.

jtdev 6y ago

How does the constitution come into play here? The government doesn’t really have a great track record for being worthy of blind trust.

mrkstu 6y ago
They cannot drop you as a customer for what you 'say' digitally (or IRL.) You cannot be 'cancelled.' Not sure if that has happened previously on the individual level, vs the organizational/corporate level though. Technically, though, if they offer commercial service, the organizational/business orgs taking it up would be protected completely in any of their speech (other than things like child porn.)
- rtkwe 6y ago
  How many people if any are actually losing internet access? The closest I've seen is people having their hosting providers drop them.
jballer 6y ago
TL;DR because the Constitution was written to protect us from the government, there is a lower bar to sue and win under both federal law and constitutional challenges. For example, the Fourteenth Amendment protects against discrimination by States, not private actors: https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution-conan/amendment-14/section-1/state-action https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution-conan/amendment-14/... And note 1338 calls out that the federal laws prohibiting businesses from discriminating against individuals are instead rooted in Congress's broad latitude to regulate interstate commerce. And here's another similar reference: > As a general rule, the Constitution does not give power to the federal government to pass laws to protect people against private actions. For example, the Equal Protection Clause guarantees equal protection for all – it protects against discrimination. Under this protection, the federal government may pass laws to enforce this guarantee. However, while Congress may pass a law to regulate states or other public actors, it may not pass a law to regulate private citizens. Your police department cannot discriminate against you on account of your race. However, your neighbor in the house down the block can be as bigoted as he so desires. https://constitutionallawreporter.com/amendment-14-01/the-question-of-government-action/ https://constitutionallawreporter.com/amendment-14-01/the-qu...

giantg2 6y ago

That's a bit of a leap. Rights can be infringed regardless of whether the government or another entity is involved, if it's done the right way (Edit). In this case, the constitution does not mention any right to broadband internet. It does guarentee rights under the first amendment which could be applicable here. The same way that corporations could restrict that right would likely be used by the government - contract law and a service agreement. This is similar to the government placing restrictions on people when they sign up for the military (Edit). The government also has a conflict of interest when it comes to things like surveillance.

jessaustin 6y ago
The Constitution mentions no right to drive cars. Nevertheless, attempts to limit drivers' licences by arbitrary criteria would receive a cold reception in the courts. The government is required to treat everyone with due process.
- giantg2 6y ago
  That's not true at all. There are states that restrict concealed carry permits by issuing on a may-issue basis, which uses arbitrary criteria. This shows that the courts don't care.
  - adamsea 6y ago
    Is it that the courts don’t care or that you yourself disagree with their ruling and think it was wrong? Which would be fine but isn’t the same thing.
    - giantg2 6y ago
      It depends on which courts we are talking about. For example, a court in NJ may ignore a case but federal courts may take it up. You can even have split circuits depending on the part of the country the cases were filed in. This leads to one court stating that something is a federally protected right, while a different circuit may rule th opposite. In some of these cases, SCOTUS may decline the case. In that event, you have part of the country being guaranteed a right while the other part might not be, and I believe that would violate equal protection under the law. Not settling the matter in this sort of scenario would in my eyes be "not caring".

dantheman 6y ago

Has anyone who's been violating the constitution with regards to NSA, DEA, FBI metadata collection and hacking been punished? Have the programs been stopped - how can we know/verify? Has James Clapper been punished for lying under oath to congress? Is he paraded around as an example of what happens when those in senior leadership have violated the rights of millions or is still acceptable to interview on TV or have politicians reference?

dragontamer 6y ago
Except this is community broadband. There's basically no way a city could create the NSA on their own. If you think a city is violating your constitutional rights, you sue the city (which is way easier than suing the State or National Government). With luck, you can get national forces on your side. If anything, if the city is violating civil rights, you might be able to get FBI on your side (Department of Justice after all) to leverage the heavy-lifting.

1123581321 6y ago

Municipal governments are subject to the same cost-consistency-performance tradeoffs as a private company. In a situation where a private ISP would not have been able to meet its obligations, the cost to force a government ISP to meet them would not obtain a meaningfully better outcome. Additionally, there is no constitutional right to municipal utility services.

ClumsyPilot 6y ago
This argument does not apply if the re is no competition, local telcos have a comfy monopoly / duopoly and collect the same fees without making any further investments
- 1123581321 6y ago
  We would expect neither a public nor private monopoly to invest magnanimously in an effective way. Keep in mind ISPs still charge for multiple tiers of service, add-on products, etc. So asking for investment beyond that would be beyond consumer demand. That is something that could be mandated by ordinance, but would be scrutinized just as any disproportionately large budget section would be.

mastax 6y ago

This made me wonder if the bill of rights applies to state, local governments. According to Wikipedia, yes. A series of court decisions in the 1920s (re-)interpreted the 14th amendment as applying the bill of rights to state governments.

gwright 6y ago
This is the "incorporation doctrine". It has evolved over time for individual elements of the Bill of Rights. Here is a nice timeline: https://billofrightsinstitute.org/educate/educator-resources/landmark-cases/incorporation/ https://billofrightsinstitute.org/educate/educator-resources...

rayiner 6y ago

Except my provider isn’t doing any of those things. (I have fiber via Comcast but I’ve also got Verizon available.) Meanwhile, our other public services kinda suck. I used to ride the Metro to work before pandemic hit. It was designed in the 1970s to be a fully automated system, but the equipment was allowed to deteriorate so much that the automation was turned off permanently in 2009. What used to be a smooth, fast ride when I grew up in DC in the 1990s is now a slow, jerky one. Trip times are also 20-25% longer than they used to be. What used to be 6 minute headways is now 8, because it was too hard to keep up 6 with the manual system. And DC is a very well funded system. Government Internet would be built by basically the same people. Why would I expect it to be any better?

Eridrus 6y ago
I think the evidence points to municipal internet being far better managed than transit infrastructure. Not all government projects are doomed to failure and IMO we should learn more from those that are because the government having no capacity to actually do anything is not good for us since the demands for governments to do things are not going to go away.

_greim_ 6y ago

> The bar for restricting what you can access, and for what reasons your service can be cancelled, becomes much higher when it's governed by the constitution instead of the whims of a private media company with a massive conflict of interest. Just to note: the government has whims and conflicts of interest also, as demonstrated over the last decade or two with recent wild swings in high-level elected office and shifts in the courts.

grecy 6y ago
Sure, but irrelevant of who or which party is in charge, they can't mess with the constitution.
- throwaway0a5e 6y ago
  They just ignore it in different ways.
- _greim_ 6y ago
  Your outcome will be decided by judges who are selected by politicians, and who interpret and emphasize the constitution in different ways.
  - ClumsyPilot 6y ago
    Which are also elected for life and are independent of said politicians
dfxm12 6y ago
That doesn't really follow. People vote for who is in elected office and for some judges. Elected officials also have to re-earn their job every 2-6 years, or thereabouts. People have no say in who runs a private media company or how.
- _greim_ 6y ago
  The populace has different levers for different controllers. Votes for politicians and dollars for private firms. In both cases the lever is imperfect and we don't always get optimal results.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

DaniloDias 6y ago

Do you want the local government to have a direct tap into where you spend your time online?

adamsea 6y ago
As opposed to AT&T / Comcast? Whoever it is I would like their behavior to be meaningfully regulated under the law.
- nostromo 6y ago
  Yes, as opposed to them. The government can throw you in jail, seize your assets, raise your taxes; AT&T can't. With that extra power comes additional scrutiny.
  - ClumsyPilot 6y ago
    Private firms have sold sensitive location data to anyone who asks, including borderline criminal bailiffs / 'bountyhunters'. They have left databases exposed for the whole world to see, enabling billions of losses in identitfy theft. And they have suffered basically no consequences. The evidence so far suggests that government agencies are better stewards of personal data.
    - DaniloDias 6y ago
      Private firms are less incentivized to snoop on you than nosy small town mayors or city councils. I am too old to hold politicians in high regard.
      - ClumsyPilot 6y ago
        Can you backup your claims? Many places have government broadband or phone, has there been abuse on the scale of US carrirers selling location data?
      - adamsea 6y ago

closeparen 6y ago

Federal funding for internet connections at schools and libraries specifically requires content filtering. They can get away with it because it's for children. I would not be surprised if you see something similar to what was tried in the UK - block pornography by default and require an embarrasing support phone call to lift the block.

Shivetya 6y ago
On top of that there have been more than a few stories of over zealous school systems who have demands of computers used to access online content. So one would expect that a similar entry point would be uses to restrict content if not sites. The real threat is tracking that will exist but "wink wink" protected under the rule of requiring a court order to reveal; or if your in the political arena just someone who doesn't like you and leaks it. At least with a private provider there is a remote possibility of suing them or using the government against them. Against the government there are just too many barriers and would require very robust legislation to protect us.

JumpCrisscross 6y ago

> if the government is providing your Internet service, then your service is protected by the constitution I don’t know how convincing this argument is. Certainly local law enforcement will, on average, have an easier time accessing these data. A better argument is this is a temporary measure. Broadband is expensive to build out. Once built, it is cheaper to operate. I imagine these municipal operations will be built well and privatised when the next municipal finance downturn rears its head.

robertlagrant 6y ago

> I know many HN commenters have a strong anti-public-service bent Welcome to a community that powers a lot of open source software, which powers a lot of the world. > if the government is providing your Internet service, then your service is protected by the constitution Nope. Did you know the constitution is a document, and not "stuff the government currently pays for"?

ClumsyPilot 6y ago
> Welcome to a community that powers a lot of open source software, which powers a lot of the world. Is that actually accurate? My impression is intersectuon between tech entrepreneurs and folks that maintain linux kernel is not that high.
- robertlagrant 6y ago
  Multiple category errors here.

supercoffee 6y ago

I can totally understand people’s reluctance to government run internet. The biggest argument I see is that the government can compete unfairly against private companies because they don’t have to make a profit. Usually when this debate about government run internet comes up, there’s two discrete options: the private sector ISP and the government run ISP. However, there’s an option that rarely gets mentioned: the public infrastructure + private ISP model. I used to live in middle-of-nowhere central WA, and they had fiber internet all the way back in mid 2000’s. This was a town of <20k people. Other smaller towns around the region also had access to fiber as well. Basically it worked like this: the county public utilities district was responsible for laying the fiber and connecting it to the building. Once the fiber is hooked up, you can call any one of a dozen or so ISPs to provide you with service. As a side note, because of this relationship between the ISPs and the public utilities district, some ISPs also operated point-to-point wireless networks to reach customers outside of the fiber network. The ISPs would typically place a tower with several radios at an existing customer’s site, in exchange for free service. These tower sites were usually connected directly to fiber for minimal latency. I mention this because I don’t see how these wireless networks would have been viable without a public fiber network backing them.

stjohnswarts 6y ago
"Unfairness" has to be put in context. How many people benefit by working for the cable company? How many people would benefit by universal access to fiber/internet? I think we all know the answer there.
vkou 6y ago
Why would I, as a citizen, give two figs about fair competition? All I want is good service, on the cheap. If the government can provide good service, and have zero-profit margin, that's fantastic. That's actually the best possible outcome. If the government service sucks, then their zero-profit margin should not be a significant enough competitive advantage to drive out competitors. In addition to all that, all the criticisms of the zero-profit margin model fall apart in a world where VCs and conglomerates frequently operate local services at a loss, in an effort to capture market share (So that they can later raise prices).

natchy 6y ago

well now I'm hearing more of plans to "begin healing" and to combat hate. I see the government using "hate" as a reason to implement backdoors and monitor citizens, just like the Patriot Act. Whenever I bring this up, I'm accused of being "for hate", when I really just am a big fan of Snowden and don't people to give up safety for security. Most people would see a measure to combat hate on the internet and vote for it, not realizing its giving the govt the right to monitor all data or crack down on something that isn't even hateful (e.g. Free Palestine, Hong Kong etc). Give the local "community government" the right to run the internet and now the federal govt will be spidered throughout all local govt ISPs. > The bar for restricting what you can access, and for what reasons your service can be cancelled, becomes much higher when it's governed by the constitution I wouldn't put it past Biden or Harris to issue and executive order for the sake of "hate speech". I couldn't imagine Sanders or even Trump doing that.

stjohnswarts 6y ago

That's not correct. It's not protected by the Constitution, it is protected by the laws passed. The only way it could be "protected by the constitution" would be a judge saying "this falls under section xyz of the constitution. so shall it be". That would obviously probably be overturned in short order but it's really the only way.