The bipartisan bill targets the legal gap the Supreme Court identified when it dismissed Murthy v. Missouri, and would cover social media, AI providers, and broadcasters.
The new JAWBONE Act, introduced on June 11 by Senate Commerce Committee Chair Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR), would for the first time give any American a direct legal route to sue a government official who tries to pressure a platform, AI provider, or broadcaster into removing their post, whether or not the removal actually happens.
That last clause is the structural move. Existing case law treats the harm as the removal, so when the post stays up, plaintiffs often have no claim. The Cruz-Wyden bill changes the trigger: liability attaches to the coercion itself, not to its outcome. As The Verge reports, the right of action would apply "regardless of whether the platform ultimately complies with the removal demand."
The bill is a direct response to the Supreme Court's 2024 ruling in Murthy v. Missouri, where the justices dismissed a challenge to Biden-era pressure on social media companies to take down COVID-19 misinformation. The Court found the plaintiffs lacked standing, in part because the platforms had not actually removed their content. The JAWBONE Act is designed to close that gap by giving individuals a damages claim for the pressure itself.
Coverage of the introduction has leaned on the recent flashpoint between FCC Chair Brendan Carr and late-night host Jimmy Kimmel, with Carr's public criticism of broadcasters over Kimmel's monologue drawing bipartisan accusations of intimidation. The Kimmel-Carr episode is a real motivating incident and a clean illustration of what the bill calls "jawboning": informal government pressure on a media company. But the bill's reach is broader than one celebrity fight.
Three things make the JAWBONE Act different from a typical speech-protective statement. First, it extends the right of action beyond social media to AI providers and broadcasters, meaning the same private claim could reach a senator pressuring an AI chatbot to suppress an answer, an FCC commissioner leaning on a TV affiliate, or a state attorney general nudging a video platform. Second, it pairs the damages remedy with a transparency requirement: covered companies would have to disclose government communications about content, building a record that plaintiffs (and journalists) could use to prove coercion. Third, it is bipartisan, with the Senate Commerce chair and a senior Democrat joined by the ACLU and a coalition of tech and civil-liberties groups. That coalition cuts against the easy read of the bill as either a pro-Trump or anti-Biden measure, and tracks a long line of speech-protective cases that have united strange bedfellows.
Cruz framed the bill as a reaction to Biden-era pressure on medical-misinformation content, and Wyden cited both administrations. As The Verge's Lauren Feiner reports, the bill is also a direct answer to the standing problem in Murthy, where Justice Alito's dissent argued the majority had effectively legalized the very conduct the plaintiffs were complaining about.
What it would actually take to win a case is the next question, and one the bill text will need to answer. The draft does not yet spell out damages caps, the statute of limitations, the precise definition of "coercion," or how the new right of action interacts with Section 230 and existing FCC processes. Those details will determine whether the JAWBONE Act is a usable tool for ordinary users or a procedural thicket that funnels cases back into the standing problems Murthy identified.
The Kimmel-Carr flashpoint may fade by the time the bill reaches markup, but the underlying mechanic it surfaces is permanent: every administration tries to lean on platforms, and the courts have so far offered the targets of that pressure no clear remedy. The JAWBONE Act is the first serious legislative attempt to write one into law.