The Claremont Institute has joined Big Tech in the ring. It hopes to give Google the ol’ one-two by asking an Ohio judge to declare Google to be a public utility.
The Claremont Institute’s Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence “yesterday filed an amicus brief in State of Ohio v. Google,” a lawsuit asking for the world’s largest search engine to be regulated as a public utility. “‘The Claremont Institute’s goal is to protect public discourse and a robust marketplace of ideas, and therefore it has a real a substantial interest in the Attorney General’s efforts to protect Ohio citizens’ ability to communicate and engage in meaningful democratic discourse on today’s public square - the internet,’ said Eastman, Founding Director of the Claremont Institute’s CCJ,” the press release explained in a tweet Sept. 15.
Ohio U.S. Senate candidate J.D. Vance and State Rep. D.J. Swearingen (R) joined Claremont Institute Senior Fellow Eastman and affiliated attorney Adam Candeub in filing the brief. The parties filing “[agreed] that the search engine has exercised an overreach of power to manipulate consumer choice and access to information, threatening Ohioans’ ability to fully engage in public discourse,” the press release illustrated. “The amicus brief recognizes the major role Google plays across the political, economic and social spheres of society, and that's why it's services, which are essential and available to all, satisfy the threshold to characterize it as a public service.”
The press release quoted Swearingen explaining the rationale behind the suit: “Joining the filing of this brief sends a message to Big Tech that Ohioans want a free and open Internet, not interference, censoring or gatekeeping of crucial information.”
The state of Ohio initially filed suit against Google in early June. The lawsuit filed by Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost “does not seek monetary damages, but instead asks for Google to be declared a ‘common carrier’ that could come under oversight from a body such as the state's Public Utilities Commission,” NBC News summarized.
“‘Google uses its dominance of internet search to steer Ohioans to Google’s own products — that's discriminatory and anti-competitive,’ Yost said in a prepared statement,” according to NBC News. “‘When you own the railroad or the electric company or the cellphone tower, you have to treat everyone the same and give everybody access.’"
MSNBC legal analyst Danny Cevallos theorized that the state of Ohio’s plan isn't to put Google under the direct authority of a utilities commission so much as to lay groundwork for regulation: “‘When a business serves such a substantial part of the public that its rates, charges and methods of operation become a public concern, it can be characterized as a public utility.’”
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