Cahill prevailed in a precedent-setting victory for a leading social media platform in the Eastern District of California, where the court struck down a California law that would have forced covered social media platforms to remove or label certain political speech about elections that the State deems false or misleading.
California’s AB 2655 law, which was passed after a user posted AI-generated “deepfake” political parody videos that the State found objectionable, has been described in the media as “one of the country’s strictest bans on election deepfakes.” Cahill successfully argued the state statute had the potential to censor important election-related speech, including satire and parody, and impermissibly substituted the State’s judgments about what content was permissible on covered platforms for those of the platforms. The court thus held that the statute violated and was preempted by the immunity provided to platforms under the federal Communications Decency Act’s Section 230.