IFPTE Requests House of Representatives Vote No on Misguided H.R. 140

This week, as the House of Representatives began debating “ Protecting Speech from Government Interference Act,” H.R. 140, IFPTE urged Members of the House to reject this misguided and confused legislation that would harm the federal government’s ability to protect Americans from fraud, misinformation, and disinformation while also unfairly threatening federal employees for doing their jobs.

The legislation, sponsored by Congressman James Comer (R-KY), who chairs the House Oversight and Accountability Committee, intends to prohibit any individual federal employee from using their official authority to add disclaimers or any clarifying information to lawful speech on the internet or restrict public access to information on the internet. The legislation takes the approach of punitively punishing federal employees, including frontline employees performing their duties under the direction of their agency management.

Because IFPTE firmly supports the First Amendment as a foundational principle of the United States and is committed to protecting the nonpartisan nonpolitical federal civil service, we cannot support this legislation as it fails to discern between legitimate public interest functions of the federal government and illegitimate censorship. 

Read IFPTE’s letter to the House of Representatives here.