California is facing a lawsuit by the Babylon Bee and several other companies, arguing that California’s AI deep-fakes law violates Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. Following a district court’s decision siding with the plaintiffs, scholars at the Cato Institute filed an amicus brief in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, urging the court to uphold the district court’s decision.

In their brief, Thomas Berry, director of the Cato Institute’s Robert A. Levy Center for Constitutional Studies, and Brent Skorup, a legal fellow in the Cato Institute’s Robert A. Levy Center for Constitutional Studies, write, in part:

Federal law governing the Internet tends to create a uniform regulatory environment for an inherently interstate medium. Allowing AB 2655 to take effect would invite other states to enact their own notice-and-takedown laws. Platforms would face a patchwork of inconsistent rules governing speech. The resulting compliance burdens would be enormous, and the predictable response would be hasty removal of lawful speech—the precise effects Congress tried to prevent by enacting Section 230.

California’s law chills online speech and violates federal law and policy. The Ninth Circuit should affirm the district court’s holding that AB 2655 is preempted.

To speak with Berry or Skorup on this brief further, contact Cato PR at pr@​cato.​org.