The first cannon shot in a new kind of free speech war came not from Washington or Silicon Valley, but from Cheyenne. Wyoming Representative Daniel Singh last week filed the Wyoming GRANITE Act.
The “Guaranteeing Rights Against Novel International Tyranny & Extortion Act,” passed, would make Wyoming the first state to let American citizens sue foreign governments that try to police what they say online.
The bill traces back to a blog post by attorney Preston Byrne, the same lawyer representing 4chan and Kiwi Farms in their battles against censorship-driven British regulators.
Byrne’s idea was simple: if the UK’s Ofcom or Brazil’s Alexandre de Moraes wanted to fine or threaten Americans over online speech, the US should hit back hard.
Exactly one month after that idea appeared on his blog, it’s now inked into Wyoming legislative paperwork.
Byrne said:
“This bill has a long way to go until it becomes a law, it’s got to make it through legislative services, then to Committee, and then get introduced on the floor for a vote, but the important thing is, the journey of this concept, the idea of a foreign censorship shield law which also creates a civil cause of action against foreign censors, into law has begun.”
That “journey” may be the kind of slow procedural trudge that usually kills most ideas in committee, but the intent here is anything but mild, and, with the growing threat of censorship demands from the UK, Brazil, Europe, and Australia, there is a lot of momentum here to fight back.
“For the first time, state legislators are moving to implement rules that will allow U.S. citizens to strike back, hard, against foreign countries that want to interfere with Americans’ civil rights online,” Byrne continued.
The Act would let American citizens and companies sue foreign governments or their agents for trying to censor them, and, crucially, it strips away the usual escape hatch of sovereign immunity.
In its legal filing responding to the 4chan and KiwiFarms lawsuit, Ofcom insisted it has “sovereign immunity” and told the court there were “substantial grounds” for throwing out the case on that basis.
The regulator’s lawyers framed Ofcom as a protected arm of the British state, immune from civil claims even when its decisions target a platform based entirely inside the United States.
Ofcom treats the idea of “sovereign immunity” as something substantial but the First Amendment as something that does not exist at all.
The GRANITE Act is a defensive maneuver against a growing global trend. “Foreign governments and their agents increasingly seek to restrict, penalize or compel disclosure concerning speech occurring wholly within the United States,” the bill warns.
Such efforts, it argues, “conflict with the constitutions of the United States and of Wyoming and chill speech by Wyoming residents and entities.”
The act’s definition section is where its true reach becomes clear. It covers “any law, regulation, judgment, order, subpoena, administrative action or demand of a foreign state that would restrict, penalize or compel disclosure concerning expression or association” that would otherwise be protected under US law.
The text is well-researched and knows all the buzzwords of tyranny, naming the categories most likely to cause friction: “foreign online safety, hate speech, misinformation, disinformation, defamation, privacy, or ‘harmful content’ laws.” It’s a catalog of the modern speech-control toolkit, all of which Wyoming now places firmly outside its borders.
Wyoming’s approach also bars its own agencies from playing along. “No state agency, officer, political subdivision, or employee thereof shall provide assistance or cooperation in collecting, enforcing or giving effect to any measure” that qualifies as foreign censorship. The phrasing borrows from the constitutional doctrine of anti-commandeering, warning that local officials won’t be drafted into enforcing foreign censorship orders.
In Byrne’s view, that legal protection has let overseas bureaucrats act like international hall monitors, wagging fingers at Americans through threats of fines or content bans.
Byrne didn’t mince words about what he thinks this law could mean:
“If we get corresponding federal action, this law, and laws like it, could represent the single greatest victory for global free speech in thirty years.”
The teeth of the bill lie in its damages. The minimum penalty: ten million dollars. It matches the scale of fines already threatened by the UK and others, which have been dangling penalties of $25 million or 10 percent of global revenue for non-compliance.
The math, as he puts it, is simple. A country can censor an American, but that choice now comes with a very real price tag.
“Foreign countries can bully the shit out of American citizens and companies because they know that US law potentially protects them from consequences for doing so. We should take that immunity away from them.”
Byrne’s theory is that once the threat of US civil suits hangs over foreign regulators, the entire global “censorship-industrial apparatus” starts to wobble.
Byrne notes that the GRANITE Act would also relieve the White House from having to deal with diplomatic flare-ups over censorship complaints.
Trial lawyers would take over that job, freeing the president to “move on to other, more important matters.”
If the Act becomes law, the power to fight foreign censorship wouldn’t rest with federal agencies but with American citizens, state courts, and civil litigators. It would empower them to fight back against foreign censors.
In the global tug-of-war over speech, Wyoming could suddenly become a frontline jurisdiction.
