I'm pretty skeptical of this lawsuit. The White House doesn't have a coherent policy on China, but it goes too far to say that banning WeChat is a First Amendment violation.
WeChat is one tool to communicate among many, many others. This seems more like a city closing a road to a church. Just because that road has a church on it doesn't mean the road closure violate the rights to practice religion. In the same way, banning a specific messaging app isn't a ban on speech. You may have to use a different app, but the people who hold remote religious services on WeChat (as cited in the complaint in this lawsuit) can still do so on Zoom/Skype/Google Meet/etc. The ban isn't focused on specific content, but on a tool that (allegedly) has national security problems.
Put another way, if the government bans a type of ink commonly used by newspapers, claiming it is poisonous if ingested, that doesn't necessarily mean the government is limiting "the press." It could just mean the ink is toxic. And if a newspaper sued the government rather than find a new ink to use, I think they would have a very, very hard time winning its lawsuit.
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I'm pretty skeptical of this lawsuit. The White House doesn't have a coherent policy on China, but it goes too far to say that banning WeChat is a First Amendment violation.
WeChat is one tool to communicate among many, many others. This seems more like a city closing a road to a church. Just because that road has a church on it doesn't mean the road closure violate the rights to practice religion. In the same way, banning a specific messaging app isn't a ban on speech. You may have to use a different app, but the people who hold remote religious services on WeChat (as cited in the complaint in this lawsuit) can still do so on Zoom/Skype/Google Meet/etc. The ban isn't focused on specific content, but on a tool that (allegedly) has national security problems.
Put another way, if the government bans a type of ink commonly used by newspapers, claiming it is poisonous if ingested, that doesn't necessarily mean the government is limiting "the press." It could just mean the ink is toxic. And if a newspaper sued the government rather than find a new ink to use, I think they would have a very, very hard time winning its lawsuit.
Techdirt has not posted any stories submitted by Mark G..
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