The Babylon Bee v. Bonta

The Liberty Justice Center filed an amicus brief in The Babylon Bee, LLC v. Bonta, a First Amendment challenge to California’s AB 2655—an online speech law that pressures large platforms to police and label certain “digitally created or modified” political content the State deems “materially deceptive.” The outcome will affect whether Americans can engage in political commentary, satire, and other protected expression online without government-driven rules that encourage censorship and chill protected speech.

AB 2655 targets media that “would falsely appear to a reasonable person to be an authentic record,” and it imposes requirements that push platforms toward suppressing or restricting disfavored speech. While California frames the law as a response to artificial intelligence and other editing tools, the Liberty Justice Center’s brief explains that the First Amendment does not allow the government to restrict speech simply because it may be misleading—especially when the restriction is based on content and viewpoint-sensitive judgments about what counts as “deceptive.”

Instead, the Constitution favors counterspeech—more speech, not enforced silence. In United States v. Alvarez, the Supreme Court rejected the idea that false statements are categorically unprotected and reaffirmed that the ordinary remedy for falsehoods is public correction, refutation, and debate. Because AB 2655 is a content-based restriction, it must satisfy strict scrutiny, meaning the State must show it is using the least restrictive means among available, effective alternatives—which it cannot do.

The brief demonstrates that less restrictive alternatives are not only available online but widely used and increasingly effective. Community-driven tools like “community notes,” immediate public response through comments and reposts, and broader public debate and discourse regularly expose and contextualize misleading posts—including AI-generated media—without requiring government intervention. Major platforms have increasingly shifted toward these counterspeech models in recognition that heavy-handed moderation regimes can overreach and undermine public trust.

“In a free society, the first-order remedy for false or misleading speech should always be more speech. We hope the Ninth Circuit agrees and strictly scrutinizes California’s censorship regime,” said Reilly Stephens, Senior Counsel and Director of Amicus Practice at the Liberty Justice Center.

Counterspeech remains a viable and effective remedy; therefore, California cannot justify AB 2655’s censorship-forcing scheme under the First Amendment. The court should reject attempts to make the government the arbiter of truth in political debate and reaffirm that even in a changing technological world, constitutional protections for free expression remain the same. Freedom of speech and individual liberties must always come first.