A bipartisan Senate bill introduced last week by two lawmakers not often mistaken for political soulmates—Oregon Democrat Ron Wyden and Texas Republican Ted Cruz—would give Americans a new way to sue government officials who pressure private companies into suppressing lawful speech.
It’s not officially called “The Jimmy Kimmel Act”—the bill’s actual name is the Justice Against Weaponized Bureaucratic Overreach to Networked Expression Act, or the JAWBONE Act—but for anyone trying to understand why it exists, Kimmel is pretty much the poster child.
And on Tuesday, the bill got support from an unusually broad coalition of free-speech, civil-liberties, tech-policy, and conservative advocacy groups, including the ACLU, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, the Center for Democracy and Technology, Public Knowledge, Protect Democracy, Americans for Tax Reform, Americans for Prosperity, and the Institute for Free Speech.
The legislation is aimed at “jawboning,” the term used when government officials try to accomplish indirectly what the First Amendment prevents them from doing directly—pressuring private actors, including broadcasters, social media platforms, and AI companies, to silence speech the government doesn’t like.
And while the bill’s backers are careful to describe jawboning as a bipartisan problem with examples across administrations, Wyden’s own statement on the legislation went straight to late night.
“The most blatant example is Trump threatening cable companies because he doesn’t like their late-night shows,” Wyden said in announcing the bill. “But jawboning isn’t partisan, and it isn’t new.”
That example became painfully concrete for late-night viewers last September, when FCC Chair Brendan Carr publicly leaned on ABC affiliates after Kimmel made remarks the White House did not like. Several affiliates moved to preempt Jimmy Kimmel Live!, and ABC “indefinitely” pulled the show from its schedule, setting off a free-speech backlash that drew criticism from across the political spectrum.
At the time, even Cruz criticized Carr’s comments, warning that the FCC chair’s posture sounded like something out of “Goodfellas.”
Now Cruz and Wyden are co-sponsoring a bill that would make that kind of informal pressure campaign actionable in court.
Under the proposed legislation, a person whose lawful speech is targeted by government coercion could sue the agency or official involved—even if the company ultimately refuses to censor the speech. The act would also allow for monetary damages and attorney fees, and would require federal agencies to report certain communications with social media companies, AI companies, and broadcasters through a transparency portal available to Congress, with public summaries.
In other words: If a future FCC chair tries to make life miserable for broadcasters carrying a late-night host whose jokes anger the administration, the host—or the company caught in the middle—may not have to wait around for the pressure campaign to succeed before heading to court.
That prospect got a notable boost Tuesday when a long list of organizations from both sides of the aisle issued formal statements supporting the bill.
The ACLU, notably, was explicit about the Kimmel connection.
In its full statement endorsing the bill, the organization said the act “would create critical safeguards that would have prevented FCC Chairman Carr from threatening the broadcast licenses of television stations who continued to air Jimmy Kimmel’s show after he made remarks the White House did not like.”
Jenna Leventoff, senior policy counsel at the ACLU, said the bill would protect not only freedom of speech and freedom of the press, but also “the freedom to joke.”
That last phrase may be the cleanest summary of why the bill matters to late night.
Irritating powerful people has long been a tenet of late-night monologues. Presidents and press secretaries gripe. Campaigns send angry emails. Viewers threaten boycotts.
What is not supposed to be part of the deal is a federal regulator suggesting that local stations could face consequences if they continue airing a comedian the administration finds objectionable.
The politics of the bill are, unsurprisingly, a little contorted. Cruz’s statement focused heavily on the Biden administration and alleged pressure on tech companies over COVID and election-related content. Wyden’s highlighted Trump-era threats against late-night programming. But both are making the same structural argument: no administration should be able to outsource censorship to private companies by threatening regulatory pain.
Carr has denied that government pressure caused Kimmel’s suspension. But the sequence of events—Carr’s public comments, affiliates moving to preempt the show, and ABC taking Kimmel off the air—became a flashpoint precisely because it showed how powerful informal pressure can be. A regulator does not need to issue a formal order if everyone in the chain understands what is being suggested.
The bill still has a long way to go before becoming law. First, it will need to make its way through the Senate Commerce Committee, which Cruz chairs. No hearing or markup has been announced, and it remains unclear whether it will advance this session.
But the fact that Kimmel has emerged as one of the clearest test cases for a measure backed by Wyden, Cruz, the ACLU, and a roster of right-leaning advocacy groups is, at minimum, unusual.
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