Christian Broadcasters Join Pushback Against California’s “Misinformation” Censorship Law

The National Religious Broadcasters (NRB) has announced that it has joined a lawsuit against a law in California, which its proponents say is aimed against online hate speech – but which is actually simple censorship. The NRB, an association of Christian communicators, in this way joined other plaintiffs – The Babylon Bee, Tim Pool, and Minds, Inc. – in a bid to block the implementation of the law, AB 587. Proposed by Democrat Jesse Gabriel and signed last September by California Governor Gavin Newsom, it mandates that companies behind social media platforms report what is deemed as hate speech, disinformation, radicalization, extremism, harassment and foreign political influence to the authorities, in this case, the California Attorney General. The law envisages fines of up to $15,000 per day for each violation for those who fail to comply. Opponents of the law include internet freedom groups as well as lobbyists for the companies the law refers to, but also the California Chamber of Commerce. In his comments following the announcement, NRB President and CEO Troy A. Miller said that the association’s members would be affected by the law thanks to the very nature of their reporting, namely, it being religious. In NRB’s opinion, some of its members would suffer censorship, while others would effectively become government agents complicit in undermining First Amendment protections – and these were the key reasons that prompted the non-profit to join the lawsuit. Miller remarked that expressing a religious viewpoint is nowadays in many cases treated as…Christian Broadcasters Join Pushback Against California’s “Misinformation” Censorship Law