Lawmakers target ‘big tech’ with politically inspired bills – Nashville Post

VU expert: Republicans have historically been opposed to this kind of government regulation

Taking a page out of former President Donald Trumps book, Tennessee Republicans are targeting technology firms and social media companies with a series of new bills that experts and stakeholders argue run afoul of federal authority.

Among the proposals many of them sponsored by Sen. Frank Niceley are efforts to prohibit social media platforms from including political and religious speech limitations in user agreements, prohibit the removal of a political candidates social media account and ban government entities from using social media platforms that regulate political speech. Republican Sen. Paul Bailey is one sponsor of a so-far vague effort to expand the Tennessee Freedom of Speech Act.

Both Niceley and Bailey declined to discuss their proposals because, representatives for both said, the two are still "working on" the bills. A spokesperson for the House Republican Caucus deferred comment to the group's Senate counterparts.

Their effort is part of a larger push nationwide, in some cases in response to recent actions by social media companies to limit and, ultimately, remove Trump's accounts because they determined his posts had incited or could incite violence related to the presidential transfer of power earlier this year.

The Greater Nashville Technology Council, a trade group representing tech companies with a local presence, is among the organizations tracking the bills at the Tennessee General Assembly. Alex Curtis, vice president for public affairs and communications at group, said that several of the bills, if passed, would likely be held up in court because its fairly clear that federal law regulates here.

But Curtis is also concerned about the message the bills send to the business community.

Were concerned that it can send signals that Tennessee is not open for tech business, Curtis said. Organizations like that might think twice about building out capacity in places where legislation might limit their ability to conduct business. They're very counter to what probably a lot of these representatives truly believe in, which is not just free speech but free markets and having the freedom to contract.

G.S. Hans, a Vanderbilt law professor who specializes in the First Amendment and technology, echoed some of Curtis analysis. The First Amendment, he said, applies to government restriction on speech, not private restriction on speech. One problem, Hans allowed, is that some social media firms have grown so large that some users have started treating them as a public square a sort of quasi-governmental actor. But thats not what federal law and the constitution say, he added.

People are confused about the scope of the First Amendment, its protections and who the First Amendment covers, Hans said. The First Amendment applies to the government and what it can do or not do when regulating speech. It doesn't have very much to say about what private actors like social media companies are prevented or prohibited from doing, because it's targeted at government action. And social media companies are not government actors.

The push by Tennessee Republicans comes as Senate Republicans, including Bailey and Niceley, are pressuring Tennessee public universities to punish students whose speech the lawmakers disagree with.

Republicans have historically been opposed to this kind of government regulation of content management, Hans said. Republicans are generally opposed to nationalizing private companies, which is effectively what this move is trying to do. I find it a little confusing, cynical and inconsistent, but I shouldn't be looking for consistency in political life. Maybe that's my own problem.

The Republican backlash to social media companies is especially ironic, Hans said, because Republicans have long pushed legal strategies to limit governmental regulatory powers via the First Amendment.

"This has been traditionally a right-wing project, Hans said. Its the right wing and conservative judges who have embraced this really expansive deregulatory approach, and this is one of the consequences of that. You kind of reap what you sow. If we think this is a problem that conservative people are frustrated about, this is also a problem that they had a large role in creating.

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Lawmakers target 'big tech' with politically inspired bills - Nashville Post