Whether leaning on social media platforms or threatening broadcasters, federal officials of both parties have made jawboning — using government power, or the threat of it, to indirectly censor protected speech — a growing stain on American life.
To fight back, Senators Ted Cruz and Ron Wyden have introduced a landmark bill to rein in jawboning against websites and social media platforms, AI systems, and broadcast airwaves. Supported by FIRE, the Justice Against Weaponized Bureaucratic Overreach to Networked Expression (JAWBONE) Act would mark major progress toward addressing indirect and unconstitutional government censorship of Americans’ speech.
Jawboning is when the government uses threats to force private actors into censoring speech the government cannot ban directly. It’s government censorship by coercion, and FIRE has long warned that jawboning is a serious threat to free expression, especially online. (Check out our full explainer on jawboning.)
Consider the recent Supreme Court ruling in NRA V. Vullo, a case involving a New York state insurance regulator opposed to the National Rifle Association who allegedly threatened its insurance company with fines unless they dropped the NRA as a customer. In other words, the NRA claimed the regulator was going after the NRA’s speech indirectly because they couldn’t target it directly. The Court unanimously said if that was the case, it was unconstitutional coercion.