The 10 Promises › Proposal 8 › Legislative Outline

8. Free Speech Restoration Act: Legislative Outline

Model Legislative Outline, not final bill text. It needs drafting by legislative counsel. Version 2.1, revised November 4, 2026.

This Act may be cited as the “Free Speech Restoration Act”.

Purpose

To protect lawful speech from viewpoint discrimination by dominant platforms and from government pressure.

Principal Requirements

Sec. 4. Common carrier duty

• A dominant social media service may not remove, block, or demote lawful public posts, or suspend an account, because of viewpoint.
• A dominant AI service may not deny or end a user’s access because of the user’s viewpoint. It has no duty to generate particular content.
• Permitted: removing spam, fraud, illegal content, true threats, targeted harassment, doxxing, impersonation, sexual content involving minors, and automated or bot abuse; user-chosen filters; and age protections for minors.
• Conforming amendments to the Communications Act of 1934 (47 U.S.C. 151 et seq.) and 47 U.S.C. 230.

Sec. 5. No government pressure

• No federal official or employee, acting in an official capacity, may make a request to a platform, or use coercion or a threat, to remove, restrict, demote, label, or demonetize lawful speech or a lawful speaker, or to change a platform’s policies for that purpose. This prohibition on requests is intentional: it covers polite requests, not only coercion. Violators face civil penalties and discipline up to removal from office or employment.
• Exceptions: (1) notifying a platform of specific unlawful content, including child sexual exploitation, true threats, fraud, and covert operations by a foreign government; (2) public-safety and emergency notices, such as an imminent threat to life or a natural disaster; (3) serving a formal legal order; and (4) routine communications not about the content of speech, such as procurement, security vulnerabilities, and law-enforcement contact points.
• Logging and disclosure: every contact with a platform about content, including each contact under an exception, is logged by the agency (date, official, platform, the content or category, and the legal basis) and disclosed under Sec. 6. Disclosure may be delayed only by court order, and only until the order ends.

Sec. 6. Transparency

• Platforms publish every government request or contact about content within 30 days.
• Each agency publishes its log of contacts under Sec. 5 every quarter, and reports it to Congress.
• If a court order seals a request, it is published when the seal ends.

Sec. 7. User rights

• Notice and a reason for any removal or suspension; a human appeal decided within 14 days.
• A private right of action for viewpoint discrimination: injunction, actual damages, and attorney’s fees.

Definitions and Eligibility

• “Dominant social media service”: a service with 50 million or more monthly active U.S. users that hosts user-generated content for the public.
• “Dominant AI service”: a generative AI chat service with 50 million or more monthly active U.S. users.
• “Lawful speech”: speech the First Amendment would protect against government restriction.
• “Viewpoint”: a political, religious, social, or other opinion, as distinct from the subject or manner of speech.
• “Request”: any communication by a federal official or employee, acting in an official capacity, that asks, urges, suggests, or flags for a platform that it remove, restrict, demote, label, or demonetize specific speech or a speaker, or change its policies for that purpose.
• “Coercion”: a request made together with, or in a setting that conveys, the prospect of an adverse government action against the platform, its officers, or its users if it does not comply (as in NRA v. Vullo, 2024).
• “Threat”: an express or implied statement that the government will take, or withhold, an official action (such as regulation, enforcement, investigation, a contract, a license, funding, or legislation) depending on how a platform treats speech.
• “Formal legal order”: a subpoena, warrant, court order, or other compulsory process issued under law and subject to judicial review.

Existing Law Affected

• Communications Act of 1934; 47 U.S.C. 230
• 5 U.S.C. chapter 75 (federal employee discipline)

Implementation Timeline

• 180 days after enactment.

Responsible Agencies

Federal Trade Commission; Office of Special Counsel (federal employees).

Enforcement and Appeals

The FTC enforces this Act; users may sue in federal court.

Fiscal Implications

Small administrative and enforcement costs. No official estimate yet.

See the fiscal appendix for cited estimates.

Constitutional Questions

See the Constitutional Question on the plank page (Moody v. NetChoice, 2024).

Current doctrine. In Moody v. NetChoice (2024), the Supreme Court said that a platform’s curation of its feed is expressive activity protected by the First Amendment, and sent the Texas and Florida laws back for further review. In NRA v. Vullo (2024), it held that government officials may not coerce private parties into punishing speech; in Murthy v. Missouri (2024), it dismissed a jawboning challenge for lack of standing without deciding the merits.

Mechanism required. A statute. The government-pressure ban follows Vullo directly. The common-carrier duty faces a serious challenge under Moody and would be decided in court.

Legislative Instrument Required

Bill (H.R.) with a Senate companion bill (S.).

Severability: if any provision, or its application to any person or circumstance, is held invalid, the rest of the measure and its other applications are not affected.

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