Rumble sues California over new pair of laws requiring platforms to restrict user speech

The online streaming platform Rumble sued the state of California this week over two new laws backed by Gov. Gavin Newsom that would require platforms to restrict user speech if it is deemed false in the lead-up to an election.

The lawsuit, filed Wednesday by the Alliance for Defending Freedom on behalf of Rumble, argues that the new laws infringe on the constitutional right to freely post political content, according to the Daily Wire, which reviewed the suit. 

The two bills were designed to combat “deepfakes,” Gov. Newsom said. However, Rumble argues that the measures require the government to judge the content of political speech. 

The first law, passed as the Defending Democracy from Deepfake Deception Act of 2024, requires “a large online platform, as defined, to block the posting of materially deceptive content related to elections in California, during specified periods before and after an election.” 

The legislation also requires “a large online platform to label certain additional content inauthentic, fake, or false during specified periods before and after an election in California.” The legislation requires labels on any “audio or visual media that is digitally created or modified.” 

The other law cracks down on “deceptive audio or visual media” of a political candidate within a certain period before an election. It would also require a disclosure if the content was produced as a satire or parody. 

The bills followed Newsom’s criticism of a parody video of Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris during the 2024 election cycle, which he labeled manipulated. 

“Manipulating a voice in an ‘ad’ like this one should be illegal,” Newsom said at the time. 

But ADF argues that these new laws are “censorship, plain and simple,” ADF Senior Counsel Phil Sechler told the Daily Wire. “We can’t trust the government to decide what is true in our online political debates.”