The Foundation supports challenges to laws in Texas and Florida that jeopardize Wikipedia’s community-led governance model and the right to freedom of expression.
An amicus brief, also known as a “friend-of-the-court” brief, is a document filed by individuals or organizations who are not part of a lawsuit, but who have an interest in the outcome of the case and want to raise awareness about their concerns. The Wikimedia Foundation’s amicus brief calls upon the Supreme Court to strike down laws passed in 2021 by Texas and Florida state legislatures. Texas House Bill 20 and Florida Senate Bill 7072 prohibit website operators from banning users or removing speech and content based on the viewpoints and opinions of the users in question.
“These laws expose residents of Florida and Texas who edit Wikipedia to lawsuits by people who disagree with their work,” said Stephen LaPorte, General Counsel for the Wikimedia Foundation. “For over twenty years, a community of volunteers from around the world have designed, debated, and deployed a range of content moderation policies to ensure the information on Wikipedia is reliable and neutral. We urge the Supreme Court to rule in favor of NetChoice to protect Wikipedia’s unique model of community-led governance, as well as the free expression rights of the encyclopedia’s dedicated editors.”
“The quality of Wikipedia as an online encyclopedia depends entirely on the ability of volunteers to develop and enforce nuanced rules for well-sourced, encyclopedic content,” said Rebecca MacKinnon, Vice President of Global Advocacy at the Wikimedia Foundation. “Without the discretion to make editorial decisions in line with established policies around verifiability and neutrality, Wikipedia would be overwhelmed with opinions, conspiracies, and irrelevant information that would jeopardize the project’s reason for existing.”
Texas and Florida are pretty well-known as the shitholes of America. Run by populist idiots who cater to the uninformed and gullible voter. I’m sure there are places like that in every country.
Places like that in other countries usually don’t have as much power as US States do. Other countries are better designed and don’t have practically independent sub-countries inside them with their own laws.
Federalism can also be a very good thing to allow autonomy for certain groups within a country, though. I wouldn’t say Unitarianism is a better design by default.
Why would certain groups have autonomy on some things but not others? They don’t get to pick and choose. Either declare independence or submit to the central government.
I strongly disagree. Local autonomy is important for a functioning country, especially one with minority ethnic groups.
Is this a US thing I’m too French to understand?
In a functioning country, minority ethnic groups are regular citizens without a special status and don’t have more legitimacy to be autonomous than other people. Ethnic groups don’t control land; governments do. Otherwise, it’s called an ethnostate and it’s not a good thing.
No, this is a “normal” thing that you are too French to understand.
Would it be correct to say that you don’t care for affirmative action?
It can be useful to improve the condition of minorities, but it is not a special status like First Nations or even an autonomous government.
I’d say likely yes to this. It’s much easier to centrally govern a more geographically dense and homogeneous country.
In the US we have strong localized government (city/county, state) and the more sweeping Federal government.
And they do submit to central government, that’s exactly what the discussion in this article is about- will the central court decide to strike down their local laws?
Frérot, la France a des territoires d’outre-mer qui votent leurs propres lois et ont leur propre monnaie.
Ensuite tu dois connaître trop peu de ta propre histoire pour dire que les états fédéraux sont des “ethnostates”. La France depuis Louis XIV a systématiquement réprimé, violemment, les langues et les cultures non-Parisiennes sur son territoire. L’EN n’enseigne que le Français, et les enfants qui y parlaient une autre langue étaient frappés jusqu’à ce qu’ils arrêtent.
Les Parisiens ont éradiqué les autres cultures de France, et je ne vois pas en quoi c’est plus légitime et moins problématique que de laisser des régions avec une langue et une culture différente s’auto-administrer pour prendre en compte leur différence.
Federalism works pretty well in Germany too. Why would you want one central government have decide what happens in your region far away from the capital?
What’s the point of being a single country if each territory has its own laws?
Checks and balances. Plus, the U.S. is a very large country, with a large population that has their own priorities and values. Local municipalities can also vary largely within state governments. The federal system allows these communities to self-determine, while also enacting a foundation of basic rights and government function.
This is not the case.
Most of the laws are on a national level.
Does it make sense to have local government? A mayor or a city council that decides how to run a town? You could (and certainly will) end up with with situations where some things are generally legal in the country, but illegal in some specific towns.
States are really no different.
If you are going to compare the United States to other political entities, I think that the better thing to compare it to is the European Union rather than other countries, because like the EU the US was formed from the union of sovereign member states and that is why it is designed the way that it is (for better or worse).
Given that, I have an honest question asked out of ignorance: Does the EU have more power over its member states than the United States does? (I am not super-familiar with it, so the answer may very well be yes.)
It has less. The EU is mostly an economic union. It can regulate trade and consumer rights, but not much else. Countries must adhere to the European Declaration of Human Rights and some other conditions to join the Union (like being a democracy or having a stable economy), but the EU cannot enforce these rules after the fact; see Hungary which became a near-dictatorship after joining, or France which is regularly sentenced for human rights violations and simply pays the fine instead of changing anything.
EU laws cannot contradict a country’s constitution. If they clash, the country must - by EU rules - change its constitution, but not doing so carries almost no consequence, and the country can ignore the law; however, if a court case around said law makes it to the EU Court of Justice, it will be judged using EU laws.
Also, the EU doesn’t have an army or a police force, so rebellious member states can only be economically sanctioned into compliance, which almost never happens to any serious degree, as it would cause too much political trouble within the union.
I think it’s even better to compare the US with other federated nations - Canada, Australia, Russia, Brazil, India, Argentina etc. as they’re all constitutional nations of federated states with separations of power between the federation and the individual states.