To defend the constitutionally protected right to freely post political content online, Alliance Defending Freedom attorneys filed a federal lawsuit Wednesday on behalf of Rumble and Rumble Canada, an indirect subsidiary of Rumble that operates Rumble.com, a large video-sharing platform that hosts a variety of content, including political commentary.
California recently passed two laws that target and punish speakers for posting certain political commentary online. One of those laws, AB 2655, also requires large online platforms like Rumble to act as the government’s censorship police and remove such content from their sites. California is forcing Rumble to alter its speech and censor its users’ speech, while also compelling the platform’s speech, in violation of the First Amendment.
“California’s war against political speech is censorship, plain and simple. We can’t trust the government to decide what is true in our online political debates,” said ADF Senior Counsel Phil Sechler. “Rumble is one of the few online voices stepping up against this trend of censorship while other platforms and sites cave to totalitarian regimes censoring Americans. Rumble is standing for free speech even when it is hard. Other online platforms and media companies must see these laws for what they are—a threat to their existence.”
In July, Gov. Gavin Newsom responded to a parody video of Vice President Kamala Harris by declaring that the video “should be illegal,” and the California Legislature responded by fast-tracking the bills, which Newsom signed into law on Sept. 17. AB 2839 censors speech by using vague standards to punish people for posting certain content about elections, including political memes and parodies of politicians, and AB 2655 requires large online platforms to censor much of that speech.
As ADF attorneys explain in the lawsuit, AB 2655 deputizes Rumble to restrict its users’ speech. At the same time, California requires Rumble to alter the content and viewpoint of its own speech and speak a message with which it doesn’t agree. California’s new law mandates that Rumble remove and label content state officials consider “reasonably likely to harm the reputation or electoral prospects” of candidates or “reasonably likely to falsely undermine confidence” in an election.
The law forces Rumble to train its team to remove and label content based on inherently subjective terms that pollsters and government officials can’t even agree on, like what harms electoral prospects or what undermines confidence in an election. And if Rumble doesn’t comply, AB 2655 authorizes officials to file suits against it.
ADF attorneys filed a similar lawsuit in September on behalf of The Babylon Bee and California attorney Kelly Chang Rickert. Last month, California officials agreed they cannot enforce AB 2839 against The Babylon Bee and Rickert after a federal district court ruled that the law likely violates the First Amendment. As such, The Bee and Rickert were free to post their political content online during the election season without fear of violating the law while the case continues.
Attorneys filed the lawsuit, Rumble v. Bonta, in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California, Sacramento Division. Brian R. Chavez-Ochoa of Chavez-Ochoa Law Offices, one of more than 4,800 attorneys in the ADF Attorney Network, serves as local counsel for Rumble.
