Dictator wannabe Gov. Hochul tried to pass a clearly unconstitutional anti-speech law called the New York Hate Speech law. It would regulate social media. She has control of the legislature and can pass anything in this one-party state. This law was shot down in District Court.
In Volokh v. James, Judge Andrew Carter Jr. granted a preliminary injunction on the basis that “the Hateful Conduct Law” is blatantly unconstitutional.
It is one of many laws the federal courts stop. They recently shot down an unconstitutional gun law.
Not wanting a crisis to go to waste, Hochul used a tragedy to put her law into place. On May 14, 2022, an avowed white supremacist killed ten people and wounded three others in Buffalo, New York. He used Twitch to live-stream his attack on the Black shoppers.
She directed the Office of the Attorney General (“OAG”) to investigate “the specific online platforms that were used to broadcast and amplify the acts and intentions of the mass shooting” and to “investigate various online platforms for ‘civil or criminal liability for their role in promoting, facilitating, or providing a platform to plan or promote violence.”
Hochul ranted that social media must be held accountable for every lunatic who uses it.
The law would force social media companies to have avenues for users to complain about so-called hateful conduct. They would be responsible for anything ‘hateful” based on their “race”, “color”, “religion”, “ethnicity”, “national origin”, “disability”, “sex”, “sexual” orientation”, “gender identity” or “gender expression.”
You could still attack white people and heterosexual men.
Judge Carter wrote that the unconstitutionality of the law trumps every other argument:
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.
…[T]he 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.
Hochul can’t stop herself from violating the constitution for political gain and virtue signaling to her favored constituents. That’s what happens in a one-party state, and it will happen in a one-party country.
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