The Republican National Lawyers’ Association slammed the Democrat-run state of Washington for its pressure campaign designed to push companies to crush free speech.
In a June 24 X post, RNLA drew attention to how a Washington state law chills speech and incentivizes online platforms to suppress certain content. “If 'free speech' only flows one way, it isn't free speech,” RNLA wrote while referencing a Reason magazine article calling attention to the situation.
RNLA’s post particularly highlighted one quote from the Reason article: “Washington's enforcement regime demonstrates that campaign finance laws enable corrupt censors. It's time to abandon this failed experiment in favor of a basic constitutional principle that government has no business regulating political speech.”
In the article, the author accused American campaign finance laws of institutionalizing corruption at the expense of free speech. One example is Washington’s campaign finance laws’ impact on Meta. Meta has blocked local and state political ads in the state of Washington since 2018 because the state began requiring ad platforms to maintain very detailed records of the sponsors, specific content and costs of state and local political ads or risk steep fines. Even still, the platform has not fully escaped the fines. The state slapped Meta with a $35 million fine, accusing it of violating the Commercial Advertiser Law and others, because some political ads were allowed to slip through the cracks without being censored.
Three individuals made 12 requests to the state, according to Reason. “The company was then fined for allegedly failing to provide certain information about these ads to requesters within 48 hours, despite similar information already being available in candidate-filed reports,” Reason wrote.
It’s worth noting that Washington is penalizing Facebook not because it banned the political ads but for not giving prohibitively detailed reporting on the ones it actually allowed.
Ironically, Washington did not apparently object to violations of campaign finance laws by censoring for political purposes. Furthermore, Meta was among the companies that were most blatant and shameful in censorship of political content, particularly from President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris‘s political opponents, during the 2024 election season.
MRC put Meta at the top of its list of worst censors of 2024 because its platforms suppressed a now iconic image of then-GOP candidate, now-President Donald Trump after he was shot. And yet, even that harsh level of censorship was not sufficient for Washington state.
Reason argued that campaign finance laws spur Google, Meta and Yahoo to censor political ads unfairly. But RNLA’s emphasis is the main point — that is, neither government nor Big Tech should be pushing biased censorship, because “If 'free speech' only flows one way, it isn't free speech.”
Conservatives are under attack! Contact your representatives and demand that Big Tech be held to account to mirror the First Amendment while providing transparency, clarity on hate speech and equal footing for conservatives. If you have been censored, contact us using CensorTrack’s contact form, and help us hold Big Tech accountable.
