Federal Court Blocks California’s “Deepfake” Election Ad Ban

Federal Court Blocks California’s “Deepfake” Election Ad Ban

With just weeks to go before the Presidential election, a federal court has blocked California’s controversial ban on political “deepfake” ads.

The new laws restricting AI-generated content were pushed through the California legislature earlier last month in response to political parody videos of presidential candidate Kamala Harris, as well as other digital “deepfakes.”

Governor Newsom said the ban was necessary to “safeguard the integrity” of the elections by removing “deceptive content from large online platforms.”

But YouTube influencer “Mr. Reagan,” who posted the viral election satire targeted by Newsom, claimed the laws violated his free speech rights under the First Amendment. He challenged them in a lawsuit filed by Hamiltion Lincoln Law Institute that we covered here.

Last week, the court saw through Newsom’s attempt to make the State the “arbiter of truth” during a contentious election cycle. Denouncing the deepfake ban as “plainly unconstitutional,” it blocked the disputed provisions in one of the laws, AB 2839, while the case is pending.

“When political speech and electoral politics are at issue,” U.S. District Court Judge John Mendez wrote, “the First Amendment has almost unequivocally dictated that Courts allow speech to flourish rather than uphold the State’s attempt to suffocate it.”

California’s restrictions on AI-generated content unconstitutionally suppress false but protected speech, the court held. The challenged provisions purport to regulate so-called “materially deceptive content,” subjecting it to lawsuits by viewers. But the statute’s use of that term is so sweeping that “almost any digitally altered content, when left up to an arbitrary individual on the internet, could be considered harmful,” it said. In other words, the law essentially makes all election-related “deepfakes” actionable.

“[M]ost of AB 2839 acts as a hammer instead of a scalpel, serving as a blunt tool that hinders humorous expression and unconstitutionally stifles the free and unfettered exchange of ideas which is so vital to American democratic debate.”

“Civil penalties for criticisms of the government like those sanctioned by AB 2839,” the judge wrote, “have no place in our system of governance.”

And they never have. The right to criticize the government dates back to colonial times.

Judge Mendez acknowledged the country’s “longstanding tradition of critique, parody, and satire protected by the First Amendment,” concluding that the same principles that applied then apply now.

“YouTube videos, Facebook posts, and X tweets are the newspaper advertisements and political cartoons of today,” he wrote, “and the First Amendment protects an individual’s right to speak regardless of the new medium these critiques may take.”

Donations tax deductible
to the full extent allowed by law.