The law is fucking meaningless when you can’t enforce it
It’s shocking to Douek, because she is a close-watcher of what’s known as “jawboning,” when regulators or government officials pressure private actors, like a social media company or broadcast network, to stifle speech. The libertarian Cato Institute calls the practice “censorship by proxy.”
Legally, this seems similar to the situation with Biden talking to social media companies to “stifle” vaccine misinformation. Federal courts intervened in that and limited what that admin could do.
Although it’s pretty clear that Biden was on the wrong side of Calvinball Rule #2 in the Roberts court.
There is a difference between the two situations in that the government has a compelling interest in limiting speech that could harm people through the spread of misinformation. Like the classic “yelling fire in a crowded theatre” metric of what is not considered free speech.
In the case of Kimmel talking about Kirk, there is no compelling interest at play, as there is no possible direct harm to other people in saying literally anything about the guy, true or false.
I dont think the covid thing actually met the full description of a threat. They had strategy discussions and said “we want to prevent this issue”, but they didn’t go as far as Carr did by laying out punishments for non-compliance. It was just idea sharing among experienced peers.
Or maybe I’m remembering the details wrong.
That’s only relevant if the law is upheld
But who has standing to sue? ABC? After Murthy v. Missouri it’s going to be really hard for anyone else to sue successfully. Even Kimmel himself would have to prove somehow that ABC’s decision happened because of government pressure rather than for some other reason. My understanding is that according to that case, the existence of government pressure and a decision in accordance with that pressure are not sufficient to prove this.
(For the record, before all this I still thought the Supreme Court made a bad decision even though it was in the Biden administration’s favor, not that that counts for anything.)
Is that Deep Throat’s new codename
