A new law went into effect in New York State on Saturday and it has free speech advocates up in arms for good reason. The law seeks to squelch any vaguely-defined instances of “hate speech” online. But this one goes much further than previous proposals to silence people on the major social media platforms. It applies to blogs and any other websites that allow readers to leave comments… such as the one you are reading right now. The law requires the operators of such sites to post a content moderation policy, and remove comments that may offend or “incite violence against” a list of favored demographic groups. This would not only create a massive amount of work for the newly enlisted moderators but would represent the censorship of free speech. The law would also apply to Eugene Volokh, co-founder of The Volokh Conspiracy, and he’s not putting up with it. He has joined a lawsuit against the state seeking to have the law struck down and he writes about it in the Wall Street Journal.

New York politicians are slapping a badge on my chest. A law going into effect Saturday requires social-media networks, including any site that allows comments, to publish a plan for responding to alleged hate speech by users.

The law blog I run fits the bill, so the law will mandate that I post publicly my policy for responding to comments that “vilify, humiliate, or incite violence against a group” based on “race, color, religion, ethnicity, national origin, disability, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or gender expression.” It also requires that I give readers a way to complain about my blog’s content and obligates me to respond directly.

I don’t want to moderate such content and I don’t endorse the state’s definition of hate speech. I do sometimes delete comments, but I do it based on my own editorial judgment, not state command. Still, I’m being conscripted. By obligating me to do the state’s bidding with regard to viewpoints that New York condemns, the law violates the First Amendment.

As noted above, the new law would require the site’s owners to provide a method of submitting complaints about any offensive comments they see and mandate that the owners respond to those complaints directly. It seems as if the actual intent of the law is to force every website in the country to do away with their comments sections.

As Volokh correctly points out, this law is neither effective in its stated intent nor constitutional. The law was supposedly passed in response to the recent mass shooting in Buffalo, New York. The shooter in that case clearly targeted a predominantly Black neighborhood with the intent of killing as many Black people as possible. Does the government of New York honestly believe that by shutting down our comments section that horrible crime would have been averted? That’s simply nonsense.

Further, the Supreme Court has repeatedly ruled in favor of constitutionally protected free speech in all but a handful of examples. Those are limited to direct threats of violence, defamation, or incitement. But under the modern Left’s new definitions, anything that someone in a protected group doesn’t want to hear is being redefined as “violence.” If you complain about the genital mutilation of children, you’re posing a “threat” to transgender people. If you point out that BLM turned out to be a massive cash-grabbing scheme, you’re a racist who is “endangering” Black people. The list goes on. (Of course, you can say anything you want about straight, white, Christian males and they’re never in any danger at all.)

The state should not be acting as the speech police except in the very limited cases I mentioned above. And New York most certainly shouldn’t be forcibly enlisting content creators to act as their deputies in this effort. Hopefully, Volokh and his fellow participants in the lawsuit will prevail and put an end to this obvious government censorship effort.