Rumble is suing the state of California after it allegedly forced the social media platform to censor its speech.
At the center of the lawsuit is California’s new law, AB 2655, which requires online platforms to “block the posting of materially deceptive content related to elections in California, during specified periods before and after an election.”
Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) Senior Counsel Phil Sechler said in a statement obtained by The Daily Wire, “California’s war against political speech is censorship, plain and simple. We can’t trust the government to decide what is true in our online political debates.”
Rumble CEO said, “The very thought of the government judging the content of political speech, and then deciding whether it should be permitted, censored, or eliminated altogether is about the most chilling thing you could imagine,” adding that the platform will “always celebrate freedom and support creative independence, so we’re delighted to work with ADF to help protect lawful online expression.”
The lawsuit states that AB 2655 “forces Rumble to undertake the impossible task of training its team to recognize and then remove and label content based on inherently vague and subjective terms on which even pollsters and government officials cannot agree, such as what content may be ‘likely to harm’ electoral prospects or may likely undermine confidence in an election.”
Rumble argues that neither the Constitution nor Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act allows California to “alter and compel Rumble’s speech while also mandating that it censor its users’ speech. As such, this Court should enjoin AB 2655 and declare it unlawful.”
A similar lawsuit was launched by X. The suit, also targeting AB 2655, says that the law mandates a “reporting mechanism to facilitate the removal and alteration of — certain content about candidates for elective office, elections officials, and elected officials, of which the State of California disapproves and deems to be ‘materially deceptive.’”
This requirement “has the effect of impermissibly replacing the judgments of covered platforms about what content belongs on their platforms with the judgments of the State. And it imposes liability on the covered platforms to the extent that their judgments about content moderation are inconsistent with those imposed by the State.”
“This system will inevitably result in the censorship of wide swaths of valuable political speech and commentary and will limit the type of ‘uninhibited, robust, and wide-open’ ‘debate on public issues’ that core First Amendment protections are designed to ensure,” the complaint adds.
Christian satire website The Babylon Bee filed a similar lawsuit in September.
