Former President Donald Trump announced today that he has filed suit against three of the nation’s largest tech companies over their repeated practice of censorship.
The former president filed three separate class action lawsuits against Facebook, Twitter and Google’s YouTube along with their respective CEOs.
All three lawsuits take the lead from a recent concurrence filed by Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, who argued that big tech companies have such power and control over speech, that the government may be able to regulate them as “common carriers.”
“The right to cut off speech lies most powerfully in the hands of private digital platforms,” the justice wrote. “The extent to which that power matters for purposes of the First Amendment and the extent to which that power could lawfully be modified raise interesting and important questions.”
The lawsuits advance a similar argument, contending that all three companies have engaged in “impermissible censorship … and willful participation in joint activity with federal actors.”
Because of this, the companies’ status goes “beyond that of a private company to that of a state actor. As such, Defendant is constrained by the First Amendment right to free speech in the censorship decisions it makes regarding its Users.”
Speaking from Bedminster, New Jersey on Wednesday morning, President Trump railed against big tech companies’ censorship.
“Our case will prove this censorship is unlawful, it’s unconstitutional and it’s completely un-American,” the president said.
“From the very beginning of our nation, freedom of speech has always been understood as a bedrock of our liberty,” the president added. “In America, we recognize that the freedom to speak our minds and express the truth … is not granted to us by government, it’s given to us by God, and no one should have the power to take that right away.”
The threat big tech companies pose to religious liberty has quickly become one of the top concerns of many Christians. On some platforms like Twitter, speaking the truth about biology, which God revealed in Genesis, can lead to suspension as happened with The Daily Citizen.
Another example occurred when Amazon permanently removed from its cybershelves Christian philosopher Ryan T. Anderson’s book When Harry Became Sally: Responding to the Transgender Moment.
In a country where the “freedom of speech” is enshrined in the First Amendment, it’s concerning when a handful of massive corporations are able to decide what can be said, and what can’t. What ideas are permitted, and which ones are wrongthink.
Thoughtful Christians can debate the merits of the lawsuits and proposed regulations against big tech giants. However, we can all be in prayer that ultimately, the God-given rights of everyone to speak freely will be restored, and that Christians will use that right to uplift others.
“But encourage one another daily, as long as it is called ‘Today’” (Hebrews 3:13a NIV).
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Photo from REUTERS/Eduardo Munoz
