I’ve got a short critique up now at Cato (earlier on the topic here). Proponents styled the enactment “Grace’s Law,” after a Howard County teenager who committed suicide; here’s Radley Balko on why “Laws named after crime victims and dead people are usually a bad idea.” While I believe the courts will eventually get around to striking it down, in the mean time the law will operate to chill some online speech.
P.S. Some recent thoughts from EFF’s Hanni Fakhoury on how laws can address the problem of harassment without being speech-unfriendly.
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[…] in enacting into law a broad new anti-bullying statute that, as Cato Institute scholar Walter Olson notes, restricts constitutionally protected speech aimed at minors, even outside the schoolhouse gates. […]
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