Big Tech becomes state actors for Democrats

 Leo Goldstein:

A ‘state actor’ is a private company that either acts on behalf of the government or has other special relationships with the government, which subject it to constitutional restrictions on government, including the First Amendment. Google’s YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter have been state actors since about 2010. They claimed to be neutral, non-discriminating in their political and scientific views and denied any political bias—until about a year ago. Then they reversed the narrative and said that they are private companies that can discriminate against whomever they want.

I can list half a dozen ways in which they are state actors. The pressure on them from Democrat officials, asserted by Trump in his lawsuit, is one of them. Obamanet, or net neutrality, is another one. But most obviously, they became state actors when federal and state government agencies opened accounts on their platforms and started to use them for interaction with the public. By accepting (and luring) multiple government accounts, they became public forums and state actors.

A few days ago, the Supreme Court refused to review the ruling in Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University v. Trump, No. 18-1691 (2d Cir. 2019). In it, the district court ruled, and the 2nd Circuit Appellate Court upheld, that each tweet from a government account opens a public forum, and the government cannot block citizens from participating in it. Most of the legal wrangling was over whether the @realDonaldTrump account was a governmental one for the purposes of the First Amendment. It was despite being hosted on a putatively private platform.

The state actor doctrine expresses the general principle that what the government cannot do under the Constitution directly, it cannot do indirectly, such as by delegating to private companies. If the government delegates some of its activity to a private company, that company becomes the state actor in respect to that activity and is bound by all Constitutional restrictions on the government.

It is the same as if a municipal government rents a property for a town hall from a private company. The private company cannot ban residents it does not like from going to the town hall or retaliate against anybody for saying certain things at that town hall. It is irrelevant whether the agreement between the company and the city specifically prohibits that. It is a state actor.

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There is much more.

Forcing Big Tech to treat conservatives fairly would benefit everyone but the Democrat politicians engaged in the suppression of speech of their opponents.