Join us for a discussion of how the First Amendment limits the agency’s consumer protection and competition powers. Are these legitimate investigations or is the FTC jawboning over speech it doesn’t like? Will courts block these investigations? Could the FTC ultimately prevail on the merits? Does the FTC have the power to regulate private “censorship”?
Date: Monday, March 30, 2026
Time: 12:00–2:00 pm ET
Location: Georgetown University Law Center, McDonough 5th Floor Faculty Lounge
Address: 600 New Jersey Ave NW, Washington, DC 20001
Click here for more details and to register (in-person event only).
Click here for Georgetown’s announcement.
Lunch will be served at noon, followed by the below panels:
Panel 1: Current Developments (12:10 pm to 1:00 pm)
Panel 2: What Will Courts Do? (1:10 pm – 2 pm)
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Find this event registration on our website. We can be reached for comment at [email protected]. Read our related work, including:
About TechFreedom: TechFreedom is a nonprofit, nonpartisan technology policy think tank. We work to chart a path forward for policymakers towards a bright future where technology enhances freedom, and freedom enhances technology.
]]>“A mission authorization structure will help the U.S. lead in space,” said James E. Dunstan, TechFreedom’s Senior Counsel. “The success of America is a direct result of a society and government that values, promotes, and most importantly, protects, the concepts of innovation, invention, and entrepreneurship. The notion of ‘permissionless innovation’ runs deep in the American psyche and must serve as a critical starting point for how to regulate the activities of Americans in space. We’ve long supported a light-touch regulatory regime for space activities and applaud the fundamental structure of the Department of Commerce’s framework, which closely resembles the concepts of ‘Mission Registration’ or ‘Mission Certification’ we’ve long advocated”
“Unfortunately, there is no clear statutory framework under which Commerce can proceed,” warned Dunstan. “Congress has certainly provided a role for the Department of Commerce when it comes to space activities. What Congress did not bestow on the OSC, however, is actual rulemaking authority to create rules such as those contemplated in the OSC’s Draft Concept. The OSC may be operating under the assumption that Executive Order (EO) 14335 itself provides the necessary authority. Unfortunately, it does not. A failure to anchor a regulatory structure to clear statutory authority introduces grave risks in the inherently international realm of outer space.”
“The proposed framework is workable, but other significant issues exist,” Dunstan concluded. “Even with ‘firm deadlines,’ the approach to interagency review looks suspiciously like the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR) regime—one of the true ‘four letter words’ of commercial space. American commercial space companies were subject to an interagency black-box process which defied transparency, timelines, or logic. Applicants waited and waited. Those that were denied lacked any sort of appeals process. A regulatory regime modeled after ITAR will not gain support in the commercial space community and will fail to keep America in the lead on the High Frontier.”
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Find these comments on our website, and share them on Twitter and Bluesky. We can be reached for comment at [email protected]. Read our related work, including:
About TechFreedom: TechFreedom is a nonprofit, nonpartisan technology policy think tank. We work to chart a path forward for policymakers towards a bright future where technology enhances freedom, and freedom enhances technology.
]]>“Public comments can increase judicial deference to agency policy statements,” said Andy Jung, TechFreedom’s Associate Counsel. “Added procedures like notice-and-comment can signal careful consideration, which courts value under Skidmore deference, where the key question is whether an agency shows thoroughness in its reasoning. In 2010, the Seventh Circuit deferred to FTC statutory interpretations partly because it used notice-and-comment, while in 2012, the Supreme Court concluded that the Department of Labor’s interpretation of its regulations lacked thoroughness, in part because there was no opportunity for public comment.”
“Public comments are especially indispensable now that the FTC is operating with just two Commissioners—both from the same party,” Jung continued. “Congress intended the FTC to be composed of five Commissioners and not entirely of members of the President’s party. Multi-member independent agencies benefit from diverse perspectives and different points of view among the commissioners. Dissent and competing views force clearer reasoning, challenge assumptions, and reduce groupthink—functions that public comments can help supply here.”
“Public comments are essential to unpack the complex issues of deceptive AI and federal preemption,” Jung concluded. “Taking public comments would help foster more deliberative decision-making. The Commission would benefit from feedback from the public and experts on both the factual question—what, if any, state laws require alterations to the truthful outputs of AI models—and the legal question—the circumstances under which the FTC Act may preempt such laws.”
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Find this letter on our website, and share it on X (formerly Twitter) and Bluesky. We can be reached for comment at [email protected]. Read our related work, including:
About TechFreedom:
TechFreedom is a nonprofit, nonpartisan technology policy think tank. We work to chart a path forward for policymakers towards a bright future where technology enhances freedom, and freedom enhances technology.
]]>Under the Communications Act, the FCC may impose large monetary penalties on a telecom carrier in an in-house administrative proceeding. The carrier then faces a choice: forgo a jury trial, pay the penalty, and seek cursory appellate review, or await a jury trial that may or may not occur, depending on whether the Justice Department files a collection action, in district court, at some point over the next five years. TechFreedom’s brief argues that this scheme violates the Constitution’s speedy-trial principle.
“Our legal tradition’s hostility to governmental delay runs deep,” said Corbin K. Barthold, Director of Appellate Litigation at TechFreedom. “From Magna Carta’s promise that the Crown would not ‘delay right or justice,’ through Coke’s and Blackstone’s exposition of the common law, through the Speedy Trial Clause’s requirement of swift criminal prosecutions and the Due Process Clause’s requirement that hearings occur at a meaningful time, the principle is the same: the state may not level charges and then sit on its hands.”
“Unreasonable delay calls the credibility of the justice system itself into question,” Barthold continued. “A government empowered to level serious charges in a penalty order, and then leave those charges hanging for five years, is a government empowered to manipulate for advantage. It can extract concessions from regulated entities without ever putting its claims to the test—and thus without having to show that it is not acting for arbitrary or political reasons. Delay becomes enforcement. Worse still, enforcement becomes extortion. In such a system, little separates accusation from punishment.”
“The FCC’s ploy to charge now but adjudicate (maybe) later must be rejected,” Barthold concluded. “The FCC’s civil penalty regime lets the government level charges, then wait, then leverage the waiting. That is not how our system is supposed to work. The Court should not allow the FCC to govern by accusation—which is to say, not to govern by law at all.”
The consolidated cases are FCC v. AT&T, Inc., No. 25-406 (U.S.), and Verizon Communications Inc. v. FCC, No. 25-567 (U.S.).
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Find this brief on our website, and share it on Twitter and Bluesky. We can be reached for comment at [email protected]. Read our related work, including:
About TechFreedom: TechFreedom is a nonprofit, nonpartisan technology policy think tank. We work to chart a path forward for policymakers towards a bright future where technology enhances freedom, and freedom enhances technology.
]]>The California Law Revision Commission has prepared a final recommendation to amend the Cartwright Act to prohibit monopolization, and other single-firm restraints of trade. If adopted as drafted, the proposal would guide California courts to develop antitrust law that could diverge significantly from U.S. Supreme Court interpretations of Section 2 of the Sherman Act. Our panel of experts will discuss the potential impacts of this proposal.
Click here for more details and to register
Click here for Washington Legal Foundation’s announcement.
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Find this release on our website, and share it on Twitter, Bluesky, and LinkedIn. We can be reached for comment at [email protected]. Read our related work, including:
About TechFreedom:
TechFreedom is a nonprofit, nonpartisan technology policy think tank. We work to chart a path forward for policymakers towards a bright future where technology enhances freedom, and freedom enhances technology.
]]>“Arkansas’s social media law is censorship dressed up as child protection,” said Corbin K. Barthold, Director of Appellate Litigation at TechFreedom. “The statute singles out social media platforms, the most important forums for everyday people—and especially young people—to engage in speech and debate. Social-media content is appealing precisely because of what the vast community of social-media users have to say. Arkansas has a beef with the distinctive nature of peer-to-peer content. This is classic speaker- and content-based regulation of speech, which triggers strict scrutiny under the First Amendment.”
“Arkansas’s alarmism about the harms and perils of social media is overwrought,” Barthold continued. “Arkansas is partaking in the latest in a long line of tech-driven moral panics. As with past such panics, the rhetoric has run far ahead of the evidence. But even if social media were as risky as Arkansas suggests (that’s not what the data shows), Arkansas would still have to comply with the First Amendment. The Act does not do so.”
“In the end, Arkansas’s problem is with the power of speech itself,” Barthold concluded. “Minors spend time on social media because, when they’re there, they see speech they’re interested in seeing. This problem—if it’s really a problem—is not for Arkansas to fix. Under the First Amendment, the strong effects of speech are an inherent part of speech—not a ground for regulation. The Eighth Circuit should affirm the district court, and make clear that Arkansas cannot wall off its young people from civic debate.”
The case is NetChoice, LLC v. Griffin, No. 25-1889 (8th Cir.).
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Find this release on our website, and share it on Twitter and Bluesky. We can be reached for comment at [email protected]. Read our related work, including:
About TechFreedom:
TechFreedom is a nonprofit, nonpartisan technology policy think tank. We work to chart a path forward for policymakers towards a bright future where technology enhances freedom, and freedom enhances technology.
]]>“The FCC should approach regulatory reform of its satellite rules with ‘permissionless innovation,’” said James E. Dunstan, TechFreedom’s Senior Counsel. “We applaud the Commission’s stated strategy, which is consistent with core American values of innovation and entrepreneurship. Obviously, ‘permissionless innovation’ doesn’t mean having a space regime entirely devoid of regulation, but rather imposing the fewest and least burdensome rules necessary to achieve the FCC’s statutory and policy goals for outer space operations.”
“Beware of the FCC’s limited statutory authority in this area,” warned Dunstan. “We remind the FCC that its statutory authority in regard to outer space regulation is limited, especially when it comes to innovative space activities that don’t provide direct communications services to Earth. Because any decision rendered in this proceeding will not receive Chevron deference on appeal, it’s vital that for each regulatory change adopted, the Commission establishes clear statutory authority. Regulations that squarely impact spectrum and interference are wholly within the FCC’s statutory authority, but regulations that impact space operations beyond that lie on less firm statutory footing.”
“The NPRM’s proposed changes to processing rounds raise substantial concerns,” Dunstan concluded. “While moving quickly to update and revise outdated rules is necessary, the NPRM appears to jump the gun on suggesting an annual processing round for NGSO systems. This runs counter to the stated goal of increasing processing speed by automatically introducing a significant amount of time into the licensing process. Processing rounds provide critical rights to licensees, and implementing a system that both protects licensees and requires them to deploy rapidly is a careful balancing act that the NPRM fumbles. Similarly, changes to the surety bond rules shouldn’t monetarily penalize larger constellations that are more spectrally efficient and operate at lower altitudes reducing potential orbital debris problems.”
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Find these comments on our website, and share them on Twitter and Bluesky. We can be reached for comment at [email protected]. Read our related work, including:
About TechFreedom: TechFreedom is a nonprofit, nonpartisan technology policy think tank. We work to chart a path forward for policymakers towards a bright future where technology enhances freedom, and freedom enhances technology.
]]>“A search engine flunks any conceivable common carriage test,” said Corbin K. Barthold, Director of Appellate Litigation at TechFreedom. “Throughout its history, common carrier law has involved the state requiring non-discrimination in the transportation of commodity material or information. Yet the whole point of a search engine is to discriminate between relevant and irrelevant content. A search engine could not ‘rank’ content indifferently if it tried; it would no longer be a search engine.”
“Simply ‘declaring’ a search engine to be a common carrier would violate the First Amendment,” Barthold continued. “When it sorts and ranks content, a search engine engages in the exercise of editorial judgment—just as a social media platform, a newspaper, or a parade does. Search engines therefore enjoy full First Amendment protection. Ohio cannot magically remove that protection simply by using the label ‘common carrier.’”
“This lawsuit is, at root, a political stunt,” Barthold concluded. “Ohio’s attorney general might think it sounds good to claim he’s ‘sticking it to Big Tech.’ But if this lawsuit succeeded, he’d be the dog that caught the car. He’d be responsible for breaking his constituents’ preferred search engine.”
The case is Ohio ex rel. Yost v. Google LLC, No. 25 CAE 080070 (Ohio 5th App. District).
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Find this brief and release on our website, and share it on Twitter and Bluesky. We can be reached for comment at [email protected]. Read our related work, including:
About TechFreedom:
TechFreedom is a nonprofit, nonpartisan technology policy think tank. We work to chart a path forward for policymakers towards a bright future where technology enhances freedom, and freedom enhances technology.
]]>Intern responsibilities include:
The following experience and qualifications are particularly relevant, but not required:
The internship is remote, and the time commitment is flexible. We pay $20/hour. Law students interested in the internship should email Santana Boulton ([email protected]) and Jared Smith ([email protected]) with their résumé, cover letter, transcript (unofficial is OK), and at least two legal writing samples.
]]>Santana Boulton, TechFreedom’s Legal Fellow, submitted an article which provides a First Amendment primer for understanding when antitrust law can be applied to publishers (broadly defined) and those interacting with them to moderate—or, as some say, suppress—content. Full PDF below:
Berin Szóka, President of TechFreedom, submitted an article building on Santana’s framework to locate the boundary between protected expression and commercial conduct subject to antitrust law. Reviewing the relevant cases, he finds that none justify applying the competition law to content moderation. Full PDF below:
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Read our related work, including:
About TechFreedom: TechFreedom is a nonprofit, nonpartisan technology policy think tank. We work to chart a path forward for policymakers towards a bright future where technology enhances freedom, and freedom enhances technology.
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