Block on CA Social Media Law Fails & Russia Bars Anti-War Party from Elections | The Free Flow 8/14/26
Social media companies lost a court bid to stop a law banning personalized social media feeds, Brazil sentenced an influencer over pronoun use, Kuwait revoked journalists' citizenship, and more.
Join Us! The 2026 Global Free Speech Summit returns on October 2–3 in Nashville, TN. Hosted by The Future of Free Speech and Vanderbilt University, this event brings together global leaders, thinkers, and change-makers to confront the most urgent threats to freedom of expression and explore bold, resilient solutions. Guests will have the opportunity to attend networking receptions where they can exchange ideas with speakers and other guests.
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This Week at a Glance 🔎
🧑⚖️ Florida Prosecutor Sues DOJ over Alleged Free Speech Violations
❌ Judge Rejects Attempted Block on California Social Media Law
🇺🇲 Texas Court Orders Locking of Foreign Site's Domain Worldwide
🇷🇺 Russia Bars Its only Anti-War Party from Elections
🇧🇷 Brazilian Influencer Sentenced over Pronoun Use
First of All 🇺🇸
» Florida Prosecutor Sues DOJ over Alleged Free Speech Violations
🧑⚖️ Will Rosenzweig, a former federal prosecutor, filed a lawsuit against the Department of Justice over years-old blog posts.
Details:
Rosenzweig criticized President Trump in blog posts while working at a private law firm. Trump supporters called for his firing over the posts.
Then-U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi fired Rosenzweig via email without giving a reason.
The lawsuit raises free speech concerns, saying, “The Department’s conduct rests on a single premise: a citizen must forever refrain from criticizing the government and its leaders to remain eligible to serve it.”
» Judge Rejects Block on California Social Media Law
❌ A federal judge rejected an attempt by Meta, Google and TikTok to block parts of California’s Protecting Our Kids from Social Media Addiction Act.
Details:
The tech giants wanted to block sections of the act that ban personalized feeds for minors based on their past activity.
The companies argued that constraints on suggested content violate protected First Amendment expression.
Our Take: Read our report for a legal analysis of why algorithmic curation is a form of editorial discretion protected by the First Amendment and essential to the functioning of the digital ecosystem.
» Students Sue CU Boulder over Free Speech Policies
🪧 Five students filed the lawsuit against the University of Colorado, Boulder, claiming that it unlawfully restricts student speech and protest.
Details:
The students seek an injunction to block enforcement of policies in CU Boulder’s Campus Use of University Facilities Procedures, which they argue violate Colorado’s Students’ Right to Speak Act.
The lawsuit was filed after the university sent police to two civil discourse events at the law school.
According to the suit, about a dozen students, including student journalists, faced interim exclusion or interim suspension notices after the event.
The lawsuit also says that the university has punished certain students for “peaceful First Amendment expression that the University believed to have violated the Restrictive Speech Policies.”
The Digital Age 🤖
» Texas Orders Foreign Site’s Domain Locked Worldwide
🌐 A Travis County judge ordered Verisign, the company that operates the .com registry, to lock the domain of foreign-run adult site over its operator's failure to comply with Texas's age-verification law — pulling the site offline for users everywhere.
Details:
A judge has frozen Motherless.com until it posts a $9.14 million bond and builds a state-approved age verification digital ID system.
Attorney General Ken Paxton brought the case under the age-verification statute the Supreme Court upheld last year in Free Speech Coalition v. Paxton.
The order allows future domain seizures without a judge weighing each one individually.
Paxton said the order demonstrates that “Texas has the legal authority” to “reach beyond its border.”
The Brussels Effect: Europe and Beyond 🇪🇺
» Ofcom Investigates GB News Pride Comments
🇬🇧 UK regulator Ofcom is investigating GB News after a guest linked London's Pride parade to pedophilia and bestiality, drawing more than 12,000 complaints.
Details:
Commentator Caroline Farrow claimed Pride had “become about celebrating every single sexuality that isn’t heterosexuality,” including “bestiality” and “pedophiles.”
Ofcom rules require that offensive material be justified by context.
Host Alex Armstrong pushed back on air, later calling the remarks “an age-old gay trope” used to “demonize and slander gay people.”
Last year, Ofcom found similar comments by GB News presenter Josh Howie breached the broadcasting code but took no action.
Our Take: We oppose punishing broadcasters for airing content governments do not support. Furthermore, we believe that government meddling in debates based on subjective terms is incompatible with free speech. It is why we urged the FCC to reject efforts to label LGBTQ content with a parental warning.
Free Speech Recession 🌍
» House Republicans Voice Concern over South Korea’s “Fake News” Law
🇰🇷 Republican members of the House Judiciary Committee sent a letter to the Korea Media and Communications Commission over concerns of government censorship of free speech.
Details:
The concerns center on adopted in July amendments to the Information and Communications Network Act. Under the amendments, the government can fine media outlets and large content publishers for intentionally spreading false information.
The members of the Judiciary Committee argue that the law can be used to target “politically disfavored opinions.”
South Korean journalists and civil liberties groups have also criticized the law.
» Human Rights Groups File Lawsuit over ICC Sanctions
⚖️ Four human rights groups argue that the Trump administration has used sanctions against the ICC to interfere with prosecutions of crimes against humanity and war crimes.
Details:
The lawsuit challenges an executive order Trump signed in 2025, which authorized sanctions on individuals affiliated with the ICC who support its investigation of alleged Israeli crimes in Palestine.
The suit argues that Trump’s actions against the ICC violate constitutionally protected free speech and US obligations under international law.
Sanctioned individuals face restrictions like travel bans, frozen bank accounts, and denied access to certain digital services.
» Kuwait Arrests Commentator, Revokes Journalists’ Citizenship
🇰🇼 Authorities arrested political commentator Mohammed Saleh al-Sabti and stripped two exiled journalists of their citizenship, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ).
Details:
Al-Sabti was arrested after an interview in which he called for deescalation.
CPJ could not verify the charges against al-Sabti or the conditions of his detention, and the Kuwaiti Embassy in Washington did not respond to its request for comment.
A July decree revoked the citizenship of six people, including exiled blogger Mansoor al-Muhareb and exiled freelance journalist Abdullah al-Saleh.
Since the Iran war began in late February, CPJ has documented a spike in crackdowns on journalists and media outlets across the Gulf.
» Russia Bars Its Only Anti-War Party from Elections
🇷🇺 Russia's Supreme Court annulled the registration of the Yabloko party, removing the only registered party opposing the war in Ukraine from the September 18–20 parliamentary ballot.
Details:
The August 10 ruling came in a lawsuit brought by the pro-Kremlin Motherland Party, which accused Yabloko of taking an anti-war stance tantamount to violating Russia’s territorial integrity.
The party campaigned on the slogans “For a ceasefire agreement, diplomacy and peace!” and “Our goal is to prevent nuclear war!”
Founded in the 1990s, Yabloko was once a leading liberal voice in parliament before losing its State Duma seats as the Kremlin tightened political control.
» Brazilian Influencer Sentenced over Pronoun Use
🇧🇷 Bianca Barreto was sentenced to two years of conditional liberty and a fine of about $3,900 for referring to transgender federal lawmaker Duda Salabert with male pronouns.
Details:
Judge Eduarda de Lima Vidal ruled that intentionally using a transgender woman’s birth pronouns to publicly humiliate is not protected free speech.
Barreto’s legal team plans to appeal, arguing that her comments are protected free speech and that she never supported violence, persecution, or hatred.
In 2019, Brazil’s Supreme Court expanded its hate speech ban to cover LGBTQ+ individuals under a “social racism” framework.
Ashley Haek is a communications coordinator and research assistant at The Future of Free Speech.
Audrey Campbell is a communications intern at The Future of Free Speech and an international relations major at American University.
Isabella Dail is a communications intern at The Future of Free Speech and a recent graduate from Princeton University with a bachelor’s in philosophy.