Ted Cruz and Ron Wyden try to fight censorship with bipartisan JAWBONE Act

A bill summary said that under current legal precedent, plaintiffs must prove that coercion succeeded in causing removal of or changes to content. The bill would let plaintiffs sue and obtain financial damages from “any government agency or employee that jawbones companies involved in social media, AI, or broadcasting, regardless of whether the jawboning succeeds.”

The bill specifically authorizes financial damages, because under current law, plaintiffs can only obtain injunctions that prevent future or ongoing violations, the summary said. With financial damages, government officials who engage in unlawful censorship could be held accountable even after leaving office. The bill effectively imposes a limit on financial payouts by allowing compensatory damages but not punitive damages.

Convenient “chokepoints” for censorship

The bill also “requires agencies to submit certain communications with social media companies, AI companies, and broadcasters to a portal with detailed public summaries and full access for Congress, helping ensure jawboning does not occur in secret,” the summary said.

The proposed portal would help individuals prove their rights were violated, the summary said. Without this measure, “plaintiffs may struggle to prove jawboning because the government has secretly communicated with the private companies it is coercing. Americans may not even know they were censored by their government,” the summary said.

The bill text said broadcasters, online services, and “speech-enabling artificial intelligence systems are critical for access to information and individual expression and have a right to independent editorial judgement. Such entities can also serve as chokepoints convenient for the government to target for censorship of disfavored speech and information.”

The bill defines broadcasters to include stations with FCC licenses and the national TV networks that provide programming to affiliate stations. This means coercion of local stations and national networks would violate the law.

“The term ‘coerce’ means to take a harmful, hostile, or unfavorable action, to imply the possibility of taking such action, or to threaten such action,” the bill said. The proposed ban has exceptions for lawful investigations, enforcement of federal or state laws, and actions taken under a warrant.