Conservative nonprofit wins free-speech case against California law banning AI political satire

The conservative nonprofit Hamilton Lincoln Law Institute (HLLI) on Tuesday announced that it won a major free-speech case last week against a controversial California law that bans political satire created with Artificial Intelligence. 

California passed a legislative package last year that targeted AI-generated political speech and punished content creators for "deceptive" speech. The two state bills in the package were the Protecting Democracy Against Election Disinformation and Deepfakes Act and Defending Democracy from Deepfake Deception Act.

HLLI said a federal court last week ruled that the two state laws violated the Constitution, confirming a lower court's injunction on the two laws. The case was filed on behalf of YouTuber Mr. Reagan and joined by the Babylon Bee, Rumble, and X.

“HLLI is proud to defend free speech and pleased that, for the second time, the court got it exactly right," HLLI Senior Attorney Adam Schulman said in a statement. "California can use public information campaigns or its own speech to wage its crusade against political misinformation. But it can’t tape shut the mouths of internet commentators, nor force political humorists to paste the state’s disclaimer on the top of their jokes.”

The legal nonprofit previously reached an agreement with California officials to not enforce the Deepfake Deception act, which would have forced social media companies to remove certain political speech. 

Misty Severi is a news reporter for Just The News. You can follow her on X for more coverage.