Hughes’ bill could add to his revenue stream

Imagine being able to write legislation into Texas law that brings an entirely new revenue stream into your office.

That’s a sweet deal if you can get it.

Enter State Sen. Bryan Hughes of Mineola, a Republican who has become a real force in the Texas Senate, and is sponsoring a bill that could do just that.

That could be the result, though probably not the reason, for filing a proposal that aims to keep social media giants such as Facebook and Twitter from cutting off accounts that are judged to have gone too far outside the realm of normal political chatter.

Neither of those two companies really want to assist in promoting the next American revolution and, since they are private businesses operating with their own money, don’t believe they should or can be required to do so.

Hughes and Gov. Greg Abbott touted the bill during Abbott’s recent visit to Tyler where Hughes said that social media companies “want to enforce silence if you have a viewpoint different from theirs."

This puts Republicans on a side of the public policy where you will rarely find them by taking a stance to expand the rights of Texans to file civil lawsuits. The GOP has worked for years to limit the tort liability of private companies for all sorts of reasons.

Texans Against Lawsuit Abuse, a political action committee, has been around for decades working to stop lawsuits against companies. This session, the group is promoting passing laws to protect companies against suits from workers relating to the pandemic.

Oddly, there’s no mention of Hughes’ bill on TALA’s web page.

The bill does not allow plaintiffs to recover damages but it does award attorney’s fees if the attempt is successful. It seems like an opportunity in the making for plaintiff’s attorneys everywhere.

Republicans have also almost always opposed restraints on businesses. This would open a large new restriction against business.

The theory is that this would protect Texans against the mean bullies from Silicon Valley but Facebook has been in Austin since 2010 and just opened expanded offices with room for more than 1,500 employees. Google, which also opposes such a law, has another 800 employees.

The Austin tech industry overall is a big part of the employment force there and its even bigger when you consider the economic impact those high-paid employees have.

Hughes, a plaintiffs’ attorney, isn’t pushing this bill to earn legal fees — it preserves his Trumpian cred — but it can’t be a bad thing to hire the lawyer who actually wrote the law to represent you in court.

This is actually the second time Hughes filed this bill. The last time out it passed the Senate on largely a party-line vote but was unable to even clear the committee in the House. It will have a better chance this time around, for no other reason, than decisions by Twitter and Facebook to ban former president Donald Trump.

If it passes, Abbott left no doubt in Tyler that he will sign the bill.

Even if that does happen, it doesn’t mean it will ever go into force. There are numerous grounds on which this will be challenged in court for its constitutionality.

Not the least of these is that the First Amendment has never before been applied to private companies. The First Amendment begins, “Congress shall make no law….”

Another question will center on the scope of the bill, which not only covers those who live in Texas but those who do business here, visit here or even read internet postings in or about Texas.

Can the Legislature really control that?

If so, the law could open up some unintended consequences. The big tech companies might decide that anything goes and no one gets removed for any type of behavior. Republicans might like that right now but most likely would not be happy at some point in the future.

Democrats mostly oppose these kinds of bills but they are worried about the Big Tech companies, too. The real conundrum is whether any governmental force — state or federal — can effectively control Big Tech under the guidelines of free enterprise and the Constitution.

Keep watching the legislature’s progress.