New York Attorney General Letitia James has another adversary in her fight to defend the state’s hate speech law: the conservative Christian wags at the Babylon Bee.
The satirical website has filed a friend-of-the-court brief contending that the 2022 “hateful conduct” law, also known as the online hate speech law, “regulates almost nothing but constitutionally protected speech.”
“The Bee’s real concern is that the law’s overbreadth makes online satire — and therefore its job — impossible. And The Bee’s staff do like their jobs,” according to the brief filed with the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. “That’s reason enough to strike the Online Hate Speech Law.”
The Bee joined a bevy of advocacy groups on the right and left, including the American Civil Liberties Union, the Cato Institute and the Thomas More Society, to side with Eugene Volokh in a case pitting concerns about online-fueled violence against free speech rights. Mr. Volokh, a law professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, runs The Volokh Conspiracy, a legal blog.
The law was enacted in reaction to the 2022 mass shooting in Buffalo, but the Alliance Defending Freedom said the measure goes beyond hate speech and encompasses “satire and humor as well as to views on hot-button cultural issues like gender identity, public health policy, and more.”
“The satirists at The Babylon Bee already have their work cut out for them just trying to keep their satirical headlines weeks or even days ahead of actual news — they shouldn’t also have to worry that humorless state officials will deprive them of their First Amendment freedoms,” said alliance legal counsel Bryan Neihart, who represents the Bee.
Ms. James filed an appeal after Mr. Volokh, along with the video platform Rumble and the crowdfunding site Locals, won a temporary injunction blocking the law in February.
Daniel Ortner, a lawyer with the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, said Tuesday that the 2nd Circuit will likely hear oral arguments later this year or early next year.
“Amicus briefs were due last week, and we had a remarkable 10 amicus briefs filed by 14 different groups across the political spectrum showing widespread recognition of the harm that New York’s law could do to free speech on the internet,” said Mr. Ortner, who represents the plaintiffs in Volokh v. James.
CEO of The Babylon Bee Seth Dillon, and ADF lawyer Jeremy Tedesco join Andrew Doyle to discuss their legal challenge against a New York online speech law which could see satire criminalised.@TheBabylonBee | @SethDillon | @ADFLegal | @Jeremy_Tedesco | @AndrewDoyle_Com pic.twitter.com/7bLeoURfOl
— GB News (@GBNEWS) October 1, 2023
The law, signed last year by New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, a Democrat, requires social media platforms to create a mechanism for users to file complaints about instances of “hateful conduct” and develop and post a policy for handling the complaints.
A racially motivated gunman fatally shot 10 Black people at a grocery store in Buffalo in May 2022. The attorney general’s report said the gunman was radicalized on fringe websites and promoted the shooting by livestreaming part of the attack on Twitch.
“Online platforms should be held accountable for allowing hateful and dangerous content to spread on their platforms,” Ms. James said in releasing the report. “Extremist content is flourishing online, and we must all work together to confront this crisis and protect our children and communities.”
Her office argued that the law governs the conduct of online platforms, not speech, and that the state has a compelling interest in preventing mass shootings.
U.S. District Judge Andrew L. Carter said the restrictions were overbroad.
“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,” Judge Carter, an Obama appointee, said in the Feb. 14 opinion. “Banning conduct that incites violence is not protected by the First Amendment, but this law goes far beyond that.”
New York Assembly member Patricia Fahy, a Democrat who sponsored the bill, called the legislation a “basic, common-sense step in the right direction.”
Babylon Bee CEO Seth Dillon said “whoever is holding the levers of power at a particular moment” can wield the law as a political weapon.
“I think a lot of these policies — misinformation policies, hateful-conduct policies — are aimed at basically putting up guardrails on what you’re allowed to talk about, what kind of beliefs you’re allowed to express, and even what jokes you’re allowed to make,” Mr. Dillon said in a weekend interview on the British channel GB News.
The Bee landed in “Twitter jail” last year over a satirical post naming transgender Biden administration official Rachel Levine its “Man of the Year.” Billionaire Elon Musk sprung the Bee in November after buying the site, which he has renamed X.
• Valerie Richardson can be reached at vrichardson@washingtontimes.com.
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