Rumble sues California over the Gavin Newsom’s ‘war against political speech’

The Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) filed the lawsuit Wednesday in the US District Court for the Eastern District of California, Sacramento Division. The lawsuit is a direct challenge to California’s assault on free speech through laws that punish political opinion that Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA) likes to call protection against the “harmful use of deepfakes in political ads and other content.”

California’s AB 2655, the “Defending Democracy from Deepfake Deception Act of 2024,” goes so far, the suit states, as to “deputize” Rumble to restrain or limit the free speech of those using the platform, the ADF said in a statement. AB 2839, “Protecting Democracy Against Election Disinformation and Deepfakes,” is aimed at limiting what social media participants can say about elections. The ADF has also represented the Babylon Bee in a lawsuit over the right to print and share political parody.

“California’s war against political speech is censorship, plain and simple,” the ADF senior counsel Phil Sechler told The Daily Wire. “We can’t trust the government to decide what is true in our online political debates.”

“The very thought of the government judging the content of political speech, and then deciding whether it should be permitted, censored, or eliminated altogether is about the most chilling thing you could imagine,” Chris Pavlovski, Chairman and CEO of Rumble, said. “Rumble will always celebrate freedom and support creative independence, so we’re delighted to work with ADF to help protect lawful online expression.”

Though Newsom and members of the California legislature were claiming to combat election-fueled deepfakes, ADF noted that the bills appeared just as Newsom was furious about a parody video of Kamala Harris, who was then starting her presidential campaign as the Democratic Party nominee. The video was a parody, showing Harris exposing reams of hypocrisy about herself and the Democratic Party. “Manipulating a voice in an ‘ad’ like this one should be illegal,” Newsom fumed about the vid and promised to “be signing a bill in a matter of weeks to make sure it is." The maker of the meme also sued California over the ban.

Newsom's words, threats and actions were completely in sync with the Biden-Harris administration claiming videos of President Joe Biden looking in cognitive free-fall were just “cheap fakes.”

At the root of Rumble’s suit is the constitutional right of free speech and to post that speech online, no matter who it offends, according to the ADF. The lawsuit argues that California is essentially forcing Rumble to amend its content and political perspective by removing speech California doesn't like. The suit also says the Rumble is being coerced to remove or label content according to the political views of state bureaucrats managing the censorship office or contact that these censors deem “reasonably likely to harm the reputation or electoral prospects” of candidates or “reasonably likely to falsely undermine confidence” in an election.

“Rumble is one of the few online voices stepping up against this trend of censorship while other platforms and sites cave to totalitarian regimes censoring Americans,” Sechler explained. “Rumble is standing for free speech even when it is hard. Other online platforms and media companies must see these laws for what they are — a threat to their existence.”