American political parties have basically done a complete 180 and swapped sides on how they feel about free speech laws.
March 25, 2026
Original Paper
First Amendment Inversion
SSRN · 6331620
The Takeaway
This paper documents a 'First Amendment Inversion' where liberals now champion the speech rights of private corporations (like tech platforms) while conservatives argue for the government's power to regulate those platforms for fairness. It reveals that legal ideologies are often secondary to who currently holds or fears private institutional power.
From the abstract
<div> First Amendment politics have inverted in key areas of speech law. Positions previously associated with legal conservatism have been adopted by liberal ideology, and vice versa. Familiar views have been scrambled not only on the Supreme Court but also in public debate. Two examples support this descriptive claim. First, Florida and Texas enacted statutes regulating digital platforms, and they defended those laws by arguing that they had constitutional leeway to impose antidiscrimination ru