When a government official demands that the political speech of citizens be censored, that is not protected speech.
If you recall, Trump wasn't allowed to block citizens who were critical of him on Twitter for the same reason.
> In a 29-page ruling on Tuesday, a three-judge panel of the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously upheld a lower court's decision that found that Trump violated the First Amendment when he blocked certain Twitter users
Speech does not censor speech; this is an essential core of the concept of free speech.
If I tell you to take down your comments, I am not censoring you. I’m speaking. It’s only censorship if I can force you to take them down.
The same is true for federal officials; just telling someone to shut up is not censorship. Without an actual threat of force, it’s not censorship or intimidation.
Note that I’m not arguing that intimidation cannot and does not happen. But intimidation requires an actual threat. Not just an angry email.
The ironic thing is that federal officials can speak freely because of the First Amendment. It gives them license to speak because actual legal protections exist for citizen speech. The power of federal officials is well constrained under U.S. law. They can tell a media company to change their content, and the company can say “no.” Because of the First Amendment.
We know from the Twitter document dumps that government officials on both sides of the aisle have been demanding that speech (and speakers) critical of them, their preferred policies and/or their political party be censored.
> intimidation requires an actual threat
Threatening to yank section 230 of the Communications Decency Act if platforms don't ramp up their censorship is an actual threat.
> You may have never heard of it, but Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act is the legal backbone of the internet. The law was created almost 30 years ago to protect internet platforms from liability for many of the things third parties say or do on them.
Decades later, it’s never been more controversial. People from both political parties and all three branches of government have threatened to reform or even repeal it.
Come on, none of the people involved in this case had the power to “yank” Section 230. I feel like you don’t have a solid handle on how government actually works, which is hampering this discussion.
You are falsely speaking of Federal Officials as if they are not acting in a government capacity, and therefore have their freedom of speech in that capacity protected by the Constitution.
The opposite is true.
The Constitution's protection of individual citizen free speech very specifically is a restriction on the government (and its officials acting in government capacity, which is how the government speaks) from acting to limit the speech of citizens under most circumstances.
Which is exactly the case in question.
This is how Constitutional protections work. They limit the capacity of the government and its officials in order to protect the Rights of individual citizens.
Case law has long held that even the politest censorship request by the government is viewed as threat of force.
The propaganda around this issue is weak to the point of being insulting.
Below, I further frame the argument against the false-assertion that the government has free speech protections under the Constitution.
The government is specifically restricted by the Constitution in order to convey Rights to citizens.
Just as the FBI does not have Constitutionally protected free speech rights to request censorship of citizens, no matter how politely requested, the FBI can not legally "request of you" to report to prison for five years in the absence of being convicted of a crime.
As any such request carries the presumption of force.
This restriction protects the Constitutional Rights of citizens.
I can request that you report to prison. That is protected speech. I can request that speech be censored. That is protected speech.
Aside from my lack of power and potential force to be able to effect those outcomes, the Constitution also exists to protect individuals from my such requests should I, for instance, then drum up a mob (akin to a government) in order to try to intimidate or force results.
The government is not an individual with Constitutional Rights. It is the entity that the Constitution exists to protect individuals against.
You're speaking of the difference between constitutional literalism, and constitutional intent. The 2nd Amendment, interpreted literally, means I should be able to build a nuke. After all there are no explicit limits. That obviously was not the intent of the amendment by any stretch of the imagination. Such a consideration was never dealt with because this was simply outside any sort of world the Founding Fathers could have imagined.
So too here with the 1st amendment. Interpreted literally, you're absolutely correct. Intimidation isn't passing a law, but obviously the government using threats to censor billions of people (since this would expand even beyond the US) is obviously contrary to every single reasonable interpretation of the 1st Amendment. Again a world where the government even could censor billions of people using intimidation alone is something the Founding Fathers could never have even begun to imagine.
You’re arguing the obvious and easy part. It’s fully settled law that intimidation can violate the First Amendment.
But under current law, intimidation must be proven (there must be an actual threat). The core question here is whether any statement, request, or demand by a federal official will be treated, by default, as intimidation under the law.
If upheld, such a standard would be a radical redefinition of the interactions between the federal government and private sector, and have some very weird and unexpected side effects.
For example, political speech is usually the most protected, but this standard would constrain tons of it. Imagine if the communications officer of a sitting Senator could get prosecuted because they asked a newspaper to alter a story they did not like. Something that happens almost every day in DC.
When a government official demands that the political speech of citizens be censored, that is not protected speech.
If you recall, Trump wasn't allowed to block citizens who were critical of him on Twitter for the same reason.
> In a 29-page ruling on Tuesday, a three-judge panel of the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously upheld a lower court's decision that found that Trump violated the First Amendment when he blocked certain Twitter users
https://www.npr.org/2019/07/09/739906562/u-s-appeals-court-r...