Comment on Wyden And Cruz Team Up On A Bill To Stop Government Jawboning. It’s… Actually Pretty Good? by Arianity

While in theory the First Amendment already protects against such activities, it’s quite difficult to get your full day in court. So the new bill gives apparent victims of jawboning a direct cause of action, allows for early discovery to try to prove that they were targets, and allows cases to live on after officials involved are out of office

As usual, I'm a bit torn. If it's that hard to get a First Amendment case through in practice, that suggests fixing the entire process for 1A cases, not bandaiding a single type.

Also not really a big fan of handing it to Cruz, especially when requires essentially saying his criticisms of Murthy are correct. (Also, weren't we supposed to take Republicans saying they're going to abuse a new law seriously?)

So, if anything, this will allow for any crackpot to sue government officials claiming they were censored and require the government to go through extra discovery. But, well, it’s the government. They can handle that.

This seems like it's potentially setting up individuals for harassment, as well. This seems like it could be a real headache if it's weaponized against someone like a Peter Strzok/Fauci, especially if the government throws them under the bus on defense. (That said, you really do want some personal skin in the game when it comes to violating rights, so I don't know how you balance that)

Not to mention political hay for anyone crawling through public comments. Which is probably fine, but worth considering.

That said, even if this did become law, given how eager the courts have been (throughout modern history) to make it close to impossible to sue government employees for any violation of rights,

I dunno if it was that bad, until after Bivens got killed by a thousand cuts?