YouTube Censorship Case Turns on Internet Law Trump Scorns

  • Justice Department undercuts bias suit by LGBTQ content makers
  • Department’s view conflicts with president’s executive order
The logo for YouTube is displayed on a laptop computer.Photographer: Gabby Jones/Bloomberg
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In a censorship case filed against YouTube by LGBTQ content creators, the U.S. Justice Department is defending the law that protects internet companies from lawsuits -- the same statute President Donald Trump has threatened to revoke.

Trump targeted the 1996 law in an executive order last week as he escalated a fight with Twitter after it tagged two of his tweets as potentially misleading. But three weeks earlier, the Justice Department weighed into the YouTube case and urged a federal judge not to declare the law unconstitutional after the content creators said it allows the Google video-sharing site to violate their free-speech rights.