The importance of the battle against New York’s extreme speech legislation intensifies.
Let’s hear it for satire: An important amicus brief has been filed on behalf of funny fake-news outlet the Babylon Bee in a crucial First Amendment case working its way through New York’s courts, with free-speech legend and UCLA prof Eugene Volokh, social video platform Rumble and creators app Locals among those filing briefs in support.
To recap: Last year, New York state passed a nakedly unconstitutional law aimed at restricting certain kinds of online speech.
Namely, that which tries to “vilify, humiliate, or incite violence against a group” over “race, color, religion, ethnicity, national origin, disability, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or gender expression.”
All of which is (with narrow exceptions for incitement) 100% protected constitutionally.
For sites that allow comments, the law threatens crushing fines that accrue by the day if they fail to post a public plan for a response if someone does a speech no-no.
The statute also demands site owners create some kind of snitch hotline for outraged readers.
It’s a clear threat to site owners: Keep ugly speech off your platform, or the hammer comes down.
![Shellyne Rodriguez](https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/09/NYPICHPDPICT000011594622.jpg?w=1024)
Worse still, this law was passed in response to the Buffalo supermarket massacre.
Albany progs are using that unthinkable horror — which was not caused by speech, but by the demented evil of its perpetrator — as a lever to achieve their long-held goal of undermining First Amendment rights.
The ways such a law can be abused are literally endless.
Especially in a state where public employees, like
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