On grounds that it violates the 1st Amendment:
From Volokh v. James, decided today by Judge Andrew L. Carter, Jr. (S.D.N.Y.):
“Speech that demeans on the basis of race, ethnicity, gender, religion, age, disability, or any other similar ground is hateful; but the proudest boast of our free speech jurisprudence is that we protect the freedom to express ‘the thought that we hate.'” Matal v. Tam (2017).
With the well-intentioned goal of providing the public with clear policies and mechanisms to facilitate reporting hate speech on social media, the New York State legislature enacted N.Y. Gen. Bus. Law § 394-ccc (“the Hateful Conduct Law” or “the law”). Yet, the First Amendment protects from state regulation speech that may be deemed “hateful” and generally disfavors regulation of speech based on its content unless it is narrowly tailored to serve a compelling governmental interest. The Hateful Conduct Law both compels social media networks to speak about the contours of hate speech and chills the constitutionally protected speech of social media users, without articulating a compelling governmental interest or ensuring that the law is narrowly tailored to that goal. In the face of our national commitment to the free expression of speech, even where that speech is offensive or repugnant, Plaintiffs’ motion for preliminary injunction, prohibiting enforcement of the law, is GRANTED….
The Hateful Conduct Law does not merely require that a social media network provide its users with a mechanism to complain about instances of “hateful conduct”. The law also requires that a social media network must make a “policy” available on its website which details how the network will respond to a complaint of hateful content. In other words, the law requires that social media networks devise and implement a written policy—i.e., speech.
For this reason, the Hateful Conduct Law is analogous to the state mandated notices that were found not to withstand constitutional muster by the Supreme Court and the Second Circuit: NIFLA and Evergreen. In NIFLA, the Supreme Court found that plaintiffs—crisis pregnancy centers opposing abortion—were likely to succeed on the merits of their First Amendment claim challenging a California law requiring them to disseminate notices stating the existence of family- planning services (including abortions and contraception). The Court emphasized that “[b]y compelling individuals to speak a particular message, such notices ‘alte[r] the content of [their] speech.'” Likewise, in Evergreen, the Second Circuit held that a state-mandated disclosure requirement for crisis pregnancy centers impermissibly burdened the plaintiffs’ First Amendment rights because it required them to “affirmatively espouse the government’s position on a contested public issue….”
Similarly, the Hateful Conduct Law requires a social media network to endorse the state’s message about “hateful conduct”. To be in compliance with the law’s requirements, a social media network must make a “concise policy readily available and accessible on their website and application” detailing how the network will “respond and address the reports of incidents of hateful conduct on their platform.” N.Y. Gen. Bus. Law § 394-ccc(3). Implicit in this language is that each social media network’s definition of “hateful conduct” must be at least as inclusive as the definition set forth in the law itself. In other words, the social media network’s policy must define “hateful conduct” as conduct which tends to “vilify, humiliate, or incite violence” “on the basis of race, color, religion, ethnicity, national origin, disability, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or gender expression.” N.Y. Gen. Bus. Law § 394-ccc(1)(a). A social media network that devises its own definition of “hateful conduct” would risk being in violation of the law and thus subject to its enforcement provision….
Clearly, the law, at a minimum, compels Plaintiffs to speak about “hateful conduct”. As Plaintiffs note, this compulsion is particularly onerous for Plaintiffs, whose websites have dedicated “pro-free speech purpose[s]”, which likely attract users who are “opposed to censorship”. Requiring Plaintiffs to endorse the state’s definition of “hateful conduct”, forces them to weigh in on the debate about the contours of hate speech when they may otherwise choose not to speak. In other words, the law, “deprives Plaintiffs of their right to communicate freely on matters of public concern” without state coercion.
Additionally, Plaintiffs have an editorial right to keep certain information off their websites and to make decisions as to the sort of community they would like to foster on their platforms. It is well-established that a private entity has an ability to make “choices about whether, to what extent, and in what manner it will disseminate speech…” These choices constitute “editorial judgments” which are protected by the First Amendment. In Pacific Gas & Electric Co. v. Public Utilities Commission of California, the Supreme Court struck down a regulation that would have forced a utility company to include information about a third party in its billing envelopes because the regulation “require[d] appellant to use its property as a vehicle for spreading a message with which it disagrees.”
Here, the Hateful Conduct Law requires social media networks to disseminate a message about the definition of “hateful conduct” or hate speech—a fraught and heavily debated topic today. Even though the Hateful Conduct Law ostensibly does not dictate what a social media website’s response to a complaint must be and does not even require that the networks respond to any complaints or take down offensive material, the dissemination of a policy about “hateful conduct” forces Plaintiffs to publish a message with which they disagree. Thus, the Hateful Conduct Law places Plaintiffs in the incongruous position of stating that they promote an explicit “pro-free speech” ethos, but also requires them to enact a policy allowing users to complain about “hateful conduct” as defined by the state….
The policy disclosure at issue here does not constitute commercial speech [as to which compelled disclosures are more easily upheld] …. The law’s requirement that Plaintiffs publish their policies explaining how they intend to respond to hateful content on their websites does not simply “propose a commercial transaction”. Nor is the policy requirement “related solely to the economic interests of the speaker and its audience.” Rather, the policy requirement compels a social media network to speak about the range of protected speech it will allow its users to engage (or not engage) in. Plaintiffs operate websites that are directly engaged in the proliferation of speech …..
Because the Hateful Conduct Law regulates speech based on its content, the appropriate level of review is strict scrutiny. To satisfy strict scrutiny, a law must be “narrowly tailored to serve a compelling governmental interest.” A statute is not narrowly tailored if “a less restrictive alternative would serve the Government’s purpose.”
Plaintiffs argue that limiting the free expression of protected speech is not a compelling state interest and that the law is not narrowly tailored. While Defendant concedes that the Hateful Conduct Law may not be able to withstand strict scrutiny, she maintains that the state has a compelling interest in preventing mass shootings, such as the one that took place in Buffalo.
Although preventing and reducing the instances of hate-fueled mass shootings is certainly a compelling governmental interest, the law is not narrowly tailored toward that end. Banning conduct that incites violence is not protected by the First Amendment, but this law goes far beyond that. {For speech to incite violence, “there must be ‘evidence or rational inference from the import of the language, that [the words in question] were intended to produce, and likely to produce, imminent’ lawless action.” The Hateful Conduct law’s ban on speech that incites violence is not limited to speech that is likely to produce imminent lawless action.}
While the OAG Investigative Report does make a link between misinformation on the internet and the radicalization of the Buffalo mass shooter, even if the law was truly aimed at reducing the instances of hate-fueled mass shootings, the law is not narrowly tailored toward reaching that goal. It is unclear what, if any, effect a mechanism that allows users to report hateful conduct on social media networks would have on reducing mass shootings, especially when the law does not even require that social media networks affirmatively respond to any complaints of “hateful conduct”. In other words, it is hard to see how the law really changes the status quo—where some social media networks choose to identify and remove hateful content and others do not….
AC