Remember that time at Little Lenin Camp when Comrade Newsom tried to ban AI-generated content that could be considered parody or just … I don’t know … constitutionally protected speech. It was about a month or two ago—a long time ago on the internet but a blink of an eye to history. California’s All-Union Congress of Soviets spoon-fed the bill to Gavin, who, with his Cheshire cat grin, drooled all over his signature like a labrador staring at a slice of a poorly guarded American Cheese almost within reach.
Take that, free speech!
Related: Bill Gates Likes Free Speech (If It Makes Him Money …)
Since most of what passes for lawmaking in America is actually a jobs program for lawyers, someone sued to block the law doing business as AB 2839 as an unconstitutional infringement of First Amendment Rights.
Newsom and the state of California were promptly sued for First Amendment violations by YouTuber Christopher Kohls, who shared the video. And he won, so far. Mendez wrote that he ruled in favor of the injunction because “Kohls is Likely to Succeed in showing that AB 2839 Facially Violates the First Amendment.”
Journalist Michael Shellenberger shared details of the ruling on X. “Brilliant and bravo,” he wrote, quoting the ruling, “In New York Times v. Sullivan, the Supreme Court held that even deliberate lies (said with ‘actual malice’) about the government are constitutionally protected. These same principles safeguarding the people’s right to criticize government and government officials apply even in the new technological age when media may be digitally altered: civil penalties for criticisms on the government like those sanctioned by AB 2839 have no place in our system of governance.”
US District Judge John A. Mendez put the kibosh on Newsom’s sinister plot, noting that, “Most of AB 2839 acts as a hammer instead of a scalpel, serving as a blunt tool that hinders humorous expression and unconstitutionally stifles the free and unfettered exchange of ideas which is so vital to American democratic debate,”
“AB 2839,” Mendez ruled, “is unconstitutional because it lacks the narrow tailoring and least restrictive alternative that a content based law requires under strict scrutiny.” He also went on to address the Harris fake that Newsom had objected to, saying that the video portrayed Harris as saying she is “the ultimate diversity hire,” noting that after Musk shared it, it got over 100 million views on X alone.
As we’ve observed on these pages, if there is indeed demonstrable malice or deliberate deception (libel or slander), regardless of the technology or medium, the object has an existing legal remedy. The easily offended or put out can hire lawyers and file a lawsuit all their own, unless they are a public figure, a politician in particular, in which case they’ve got so steep a hill to climb that even lawfare becomes an unaffordable means to make an example. Getting a state or the government to infringe on rights and make taxpayers pay when someone dares challenge them is much easier so Democrats try to enshrine police-state enforced remedies to whatever might offend or please them personally into law.
2019: Democrat Proposes 5 Years in Prison For “Parody” Videos Of Politicians Before Elections
AB 2839 is such a bill, and it is doomed. It was always too broad.
The judge describes the California censorship law as radical and sweeping. “Almost any digitally altered content,” writes Mendez, “could be considered harmful…” The law “has the effect of implicating vast amounts of political and constitutionally protected speech.”
Limiting Free Speech continues to elude them, at least on a scale that would permit their narrative mills to dominate the public discourse. Those proverbial water cooler conversations would be regulated, from the water to the cooler, to what the water was in, to the energy it uses, to the types of cups available and portion size, how they are disposed of, and the words one is permitted to say around them.
Freedom might be messy, but it’s a lot easier, and cheaper, and is always under attack from the likes of Gov. Nuisance and his ilk.
