Published January 15, 2025
Today, the Supreme Court will hear arguments in the Free Speech Coalition v. Paxton case. Without any idea who the parties are, many Americans would probably reflexively side with the Free Speech Coalition. After all, isn’t free speech what we are all about as Americans?
If told, however, that in this case, the plaintiffs are a lobbying group representing hardcore pornography websites known to profit from child sex trafficking and rape, we might rethink our reflexive sympathies. Can there be such a thing as too much free speech protection?
In recent years, many Christian conservatives would have been tempted to answer “no,” seeing censorship as a major threat to our freedom to argue our viewpoints and practice our beliefs. And yet, as George Will once famously said, “The most important four words in politics are ‘up to a point.’” Even free speech, it turns out, can be taken too far, and the current case before the high court is Exhibit A of why and where we must be prepared to draw some lines in the sand.
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Brad Littlejohn was a Fellow in EPPC’s Technology and Human Flourishing and Evangelicals in Civic Life programs from 2022-2025. His wide-ranging research and writing encompasses work on the relation of digital technology and embodiment, the appropriate limits of free speech, the nature of freedom and authority in the Christian tradition, and the retrieval of a Protestant natural law ethic.
