Arkansas Attorney General Leslie Rutledge's effort to limit the ability of social media companies to police their own platforms fell a single vote shy of advancing to the House floor Monday, after concerns were raised about the bill's constitutionality.
House Bill 1647, which Rutledge touted during a news conference last month as an effort to combat "cancel culture," would authorize her office to take legal action against social media companies under the state's Deceptive Trade Practices Act for deleting or restricting access to users' posts, or applying labels to their content.
The bill was sponsored in the House by Rep. Brian Evans, R-Cabot, who presented it to the chamber's Committee on Insurance and Commerce on Monday.
After nearly an hour of debate, the bill failed to pass out of the committee on a party-line vote that fell one vote short of passage. One member of the committee did not attend or vote.
That member, Rep. Jimmy Gazaway, R-Paragould, said later Monday that he had several concerns about the bill that he hoped would be addressed.
In a statement released by her office Monday, Rutledge called on the committee's Democrats to "reconsider their no votes and join their GOP colleagues and me in standing up to Big Tech's cancel culture to ensure their constituents' voices are heard."
The issue, as presented by Rutledge and other Republican lawmakers, is that large social media companies like Twitter and Facebook are selectively applying their service terms to punish conservative voices.
"Quite frankly, if someone doesn't like what you say, they can censor you" Evans said.
Others have pushed back against that representation and argued that the First Amendment, which guarantees the right to speech free from government interference, also allows private companies the right to choose what content is allowed on their platforms.
Groups including the Arkansas Press Association and NetChoice -- a trade association whose members include Amazon, Google and TikTok -- have argued that HB1647 is unconstitutional and would be struck down by the courts.
"This bill would allow the government to compel social media platforms to host certain kinds of speech, even they don't agree with the speech, even if the speech conflicts with their personal values and even if the speech hurts their business model," said Chris Marchese, a lobbyist for NetChoice.
Two members of Rutledge's staff, who spoke for the bill Monday, said the attorney general would defend the law in court if it were challenged.
Rutledge, whose term ends in January 2023, is seeking the Republican nomination for governor in 2022, along with former White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders. Both women have sought to align themselves with former President Donald Trump, who was removed from Twitter shortly after the U.S. Capitol was stormed Jan. 6.
The company said it had reviewed Trump's tweets and "specifically how they are being received and interpreted on and off Twitter," and "we have permanently suspended the account due to the risk of further incitement of violence."