H.R. 140 would bar federal employees from using their official authority or influence to promote censorship or to advocate for that action by a third party. Employees found to violate the prohibition would be subject to civil penalties.
Censorship, as defined in H.R. 140, means using influence or coercion to:
Remove or suppress lawful speech from an interactive computer service,
Add a disclaimer or other alert to lawful speech expressed on an interactive computer service, or
Remove or restrict a person’s access to a publicly available interactive computer service under certain conditions.
Activities related to law enforcement would be excluded from the bill’s prohibition but agencies undertaking activities under that exclusion would be required to report to the Congress before taking any action.
Enacting H.R. 140 could result in additional civil penalty collections, which are treated as revenues in the budget. However, CBO estimates that any such collections would be
