The PRO-SPEECH Act Is Anything but First Amendment-Friendly
Elizabeth Nolan Brown | 6.14.2021 10:05 AM
It may be dubbed the "Promoting Rights and Online Speech Protections to Ensure Every Consumer is Heard" (PRO-SPEECH) Act, but a new bill from Mississippi Republican Sen. Roger Wicker is anything but First Amendment-friendly. Wicker's measure would ban huge swaths of online content moderation, forcing private internet forums to host speech that may currently violate their terms of service and be considered hateful, harassing, vulgar, or otherwise undesired.
The bill would also take aim at freedom of association and free markets, disallowing some tech services—such as app stores and cloud computing companies—from choosing what products they offer or what businesses they'll contract with.
Introduced Thursday, the so-called PRO-SPEECH Act strikes at the heart of First Amendment protections, compelling companies under threat of sanction from the government to platform messages they otherwise wouldn't.
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