Dan Polsby on the Reach of the First Amendment

(Don Boudreaux)

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In supportive response to this post of mine yesterday on the misbegotten insistence that private tech companies are restrained, as is government, by the First Amendment, former GMU Law School Dean Dan Polsby sent to me this e-mail. Adding a link, I share it here with Dan’s kind permission.

Don, people who didn’t have to think through Shelley v. Kraemer as a part of their formal education do not appreciate the can of worms one opens by making private decisions into quasi-state action. Granting these big tech networks have generated a problem (maybe more than one) that may need be addressed, but let’s consider the many legislative (and private!) remedies than can be deployed. Who in his right mind would want to give a committee of government lawyers the last word on what, exactly, these problems are and what they aren’t, and what the solution shall be?