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Government creates laws which permit or forbid corporations from doing things all the time. In this case, laws allowing corporations to restrict free speech ar
by thomquaid 4y ago
Government creates laws which permit or forbid corporations from doing things all the time. In this case, laws allowing corporations to restrict free speech are balanced against laws which forbid such restriction on private citizens, and the constitutional law which says 'government cannot restrict free speech' is interpreted to mean also government cannot permit corporations to restrict free speech. Not a hard concept, for a modern law scholar, or a constitutional law scholar. The idea that speech can be restricted by a private entity in the US is the stretch that originalists would have a problem with (e.g. you can yell fire in a crowded theater and policies to the contrary are prior restraint and unlawful by corporations or by governments).
- hackerlight 4y ago"the constitutional law which says 'government cannot restrict free speech' is interpreted to mean also government cannot permit corporations to restrict free speech." This is just a restatement of what I asked. Why is it interpreted to mean this? That's a total departure from the meaning of 1A.
- radford-neal 4y agoI haven't read the details of the case, but surely that's not what's at issue. I assume that the government is arguing that they are allowed to prohibit private parties from restricting speech, not that the government is required to impose such a prohibition.
- beerandt 4y agoIt doesn't say that- it only says that corporations restricting speech isn't itself an act of free speech protected by the 1st Amendment. Therfore that act of censorship can be subject to govt regulations. >They go on to claim the 1st Amendment has a role to play in determining permissible restrictions on corporate censorship This ensures the said govt regs stay in the lane of common carrier regulation, and don't encroach into govt regulations that restrict speech based on the content. Which prevents the govt from outsourcing govt censorship to corporations via these types of regulations.