What Congress Can Learn From the GRANITE Act
When the Wyoming legislature introduced HB 70—the Guaranteeing Rights Against Novel International Tyranny and Extortion (GRANITE) Act—its sponsors correctly identified one of the most pressing and underappreciated threats to American free expression: the growing willingness of foreign governments to extend their censorship regimes into Americans’ digital lives. The underlying impulse is sound; however, the GRANITE Act raises important structural questions about whether a state legislature is the appropriate venue for this type of intervention and whether its private right of action is the most effective enforcement mechanism.
The GRANITE Act seeks to position Wyoming as a domestic safe harbor against foreign censorship, creating a private right of action that allows residents and businesses to sue foreign states and international organizations that attempt to enforce censorship orders targeting constitutionally protected expression. The bill defines “foreign censorship laws” as those that restrict or penalize speech based on content or viewpoint in ways that would be presumptively unconstitutional under the First Amendment. Prevailing plaintiffs could recover statutory damages of $1 million per violation or 10 percent of the defendant’s annual U.S.-related revenue, whichever is greater. The bill also erects a defensive shield prohibiting Wyoming state agencies and employees from cooperating with foreign censorship orders or extradition requests based on speech-related offenses and bars Wyoming courts from recognizing or enforcing foreign judgments that impose liability for expression protected under the Wyoming and U.S. constitutions.
The Threat Is Real and Escalating
The evidence that foreign regulatory bodies are actively attempting to impose speech restrictions on American companies and their users is substantial and growing. The European Commission imposed a €120 million fine on X in December 2025, marking the first formal penalty under the Digital Services Act. Empowered by the Online Safety Act, the U.K. Office of Communications (Ofcom) has threatened U.S.-based platforms like 4chan with fines reaching $25 million or 10 percent of worldwide revenue. Brazil’s judiciary has ordered American technology companies to suppress user accounts and hand over private data to comply with domestic legal standards that bear no resemblance to First Amendment protections.
Perhaps most alarmingly, a February 2026 report from the House Judiciary Committee revealed the European Commission had conducted over 100 closed-door meetings with major social media companies since 2020, pressuring them to adopt globally applicable content moderation rules that resulted in the suppression of lawful American speech. Because platforms typically maintain a single set of terms and conditions worldwide, European regulatory demands create what scholars call the “Brussels effect”—a phenomenon in which foreign regulations effectively shape what American citizens can say and see online.
A Worthy Objective at the Wrong Level of Government
The GRANITE Act draws inspiration from the Securing the Protection of Our Enduring and Established Constitutional Heritage (SPEECH) Act, which prohibits American courts from recognizing or enforcing foreign defamation judgments that fail to meet First Amendment standards. That federal law passed Congress unanimously in 2010 and was signed by President Barack Obama, reflecting a broad bipartisan consensus that American speech protections should not be circumvented through foreign legal systems. The GRANITE Act attempts to extend this defensive logic from defamation to the broader universe of foreign censorship; however, the SPEECH Act succeeded precisely because it provided a uniform national standard.
Foreign affairs, trade relations, and the enforcement of international legal norms are quintessentially federal concerns. A single state cannot meaningfully deter the European Commission or Ofcom from pursuing enforcement actions against American platforms. Foreign sovereign immunity, treaty obligations, and the constitutional allocation of foreign affairs power to the federal government all constrain what a state legislature can accomplish in this arena. As legal scholars have noted in their analyses of state-level “mini-SPEECH Acts,” the substantive provisions of such state laws are frequently superfluous where federal protections already exist, and their core utility lies chiefly in providing a backup in the event of federal repeal. Perhaps Wyoming’s bill is understood best as a statement of principle—a valuable signal, but not a substitute for congressional action.
Reports indicate that both New Hampshire and the U.S. House of Representatives are developing their own versions of the GRANITE Act. Modeled on the SPEECH Act’s proven framework but expanded to address the full spectrum of foreign content regulation, a federal anti-censorship shield would carry the legal authority, diplomatic weight, and constitutional standing that state-level measures inherently lack.
The Sword Hits a Federal Wall—But the Shield Holds
The GRANITE Act’s most ambitious provision—its private right of action allowing individual residents to sue foreign governments—confronts a formidable legal obstacle. Codified at 28 U.S.C. §§ 1602-1611, the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act (FSIA) is the exclusive basis for exercising jurisdiction over a foreign state in American courts. Foreign governments are presumptively immune from suit unless one of the FSIA’s narrow exceptions applies, and no existing exception covers foreign censorship enforcement against American speech. A Wyoming state legislature cannot create new exceptions to a federal statute; rather, that is a congressional prerogative constrained by the Supremacy Clause. The moment a foreign sovereign raises FSIA immunity in response to a GRANITE Act lawsuit, the case is almost certainly dead on arrival (absent a federal carve-out).
This legal reality makes the distinction between the bill’s sword and shield provisions critically important. The defensive (“shield”) provisions, including refusal to recognize foreign censorship judgments and barring state agency cooperation with foreign speech-related enforcement actions, are plausibly within Wyoming’s sovereign authority, as states have legitimate power over their own courts and their own employees. The same constitutional logic underpins the federal SPEECH Act, which operates as a shield against foreign defamation judgments rather than as a weapon for affirmative litigation against foreign sovereigns. The GRANITE Act’s shield provisions represent a sound and defensible extension of this model.
The offensive (“sword”) provisions, however, are a different animal entirely. Suing a foreign sovereign is inherently a federal-level act that implicates foreign affairs, treaty obligations, and a statutory immunity framework that Congress typically controls. Even setting aside the FSIA barrier, private rights of action tend to generate excessive litigation driven by financial incentives rather than genuine harm. The experience of Illinois’ Biometric Information Privacy Act offers a cautionary tale: Lawsuits proliferated exponentially after courts eliminated the requirement to demonstrate actual harm, thereby burdening businesses without proportionately benefiting the consumers the law was designed to protect. The GRANITE Act’s statutory damages would create enormous incentives for speculative litigation, with damages that bear no necessary relationship to the harm suffered by any individual plaintiff.
If Congress does take up the GRANITE Act’s offensive ambitions, then the enforcement mechanism deserves careful redesign. Rather than deputizing millions of individual litigants or relying solely on companies whose financial incentives may favor quiet compliance over costly litigation, a more effective model would establish a federal complaints process through which American citizens and businesses can report foreign censorship enforcement to a designated federal agency. The federal government would then evaluate these complaints and bring actions against foreign sovereigns on behalf of affected Americans where warranted. This approach leverages the federal government’s unique authority to waive sovereign immunity through the FSIA, carries the diplomatic weight necessary to deter foreign regulators, and avoids the litigation-mill dynamics that plague private enforcement regimes. It also ensures that the enormous stakes involved in suing a foreign government—with all the attendant implications for trade relations and international comity—are managed by the institution constitutionally charged with conducting foreign affairs.
Indeed, a version of this strategy may already be forthcoming in the freedom.gov website, which will supposedly create a digital space for foreign-censored content to be shown. And the federal government could go a step further by giving citizens some kind of legal standing to claim their uniquely American rights.
The Shield Is the Legacy
GRANITE Act supporters deserve credit for identifying and confronting a genuine threat to American liberty. The shield provisions, which bar Wyoming courts from recognizing foreign censorship judgments and prohibit state agencies from cooperating with foreign speech-related enforcement, represent a sound and constitutionally grounded application of state sovereignty. They follow the proven model of the federal SPEECH Act, which has successfully insulated American speech from foreign defamation judgments for over 15 years. The GRANITE Act correctly identified the problem; now, the task is to match that ambition with the right tools at the right level of government and with enforcement structures designed to win rather than to generate litigation.