Tech mogul Elon Musk notched an important victory for free speech this week after a federal judge on Tuesday invalidated a California law that sought to restrict digitally altered videos on online platforms like X, which Musk owns.
Assembly Bill 2655, the Defending Democracy from Deepfake Deception Act of 2024, required X and some other large platforms to “block the posting of materially deceptive content related to elections in California, during specified periods before and after an election.”
“No parts of this statute are severable because the whole statute is preempted,” U.S. District Court Judge John Mendez explained in his ruling. “No parts of A.B. 2655 can be salvaged,” he added.
Mendez, a 2008 appointee of President George W. Bush, found that the legislation was not compatible with Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, and declined to rule on the free speech merits of the case. The federal judge, on the district court for the Eastern District of California, found that platforms like X “don’t have anything to do with these videos that the state is objecting to. ”
The lawsuit against the California legislation was originally brought by Christopher Kohls, who had created a digitally altered parody video in 2024 in which then-presidential candidate Kamala Harris calls herself the “ultimate diversity hire.” Musk’s social media platform X, the satire website the Babylon Bee, and the online video platform Rumble later joined Kohls’ lawsuit.
The legislation was signed into state law by California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, in September of last year and was designed to take effect before the 2024 presidential election in an attempt to stop the sharing of artificial intelligence-generated, altered videos known as deepfakes that parodied political candidates including Harris, who then was still vice president.
Newsom discussed his thinking behind passing legislation restricting digitally altered videos in July 2024 writing that “Manipulating a voice in an ‘ad’ like this one should be illegal,” in response to a news article about Musk sharing the altered Harris campaign advertisement. “I’ll be signing a bill in a matter of weeks to make sure it is,” the California governor added.
Musk did not take the criticism lightly, replying on X below the governor’s comments, “I checked with renowned world authority, Professor Suggon Deeznutz, and he said parody is legal in America.”
About a year later, the Tesla CEO appears at least partially vindicated.
A spokeswoman for Newsom told The Daily Signal, “We are still reviewing the Court’s ruling, but remain convinced that common sense labeling requirements for deepfakes are important to maintain the integrity of our elections.”
Mendez also said he will overrule another California law restricting AI-generated content in the near future. That legislation according to its author, Assemblywoman Gail Pellerin, allowed recipients of digitally altered material to seek injunctive relief and damages from the distributor of the material, and it additionally mandated that deepfake parody material be marked that it was digitally altered.
[Editor’s note: This story originally was published by The Daily Signal.]