Corporate America Has a New Playbook for Protecting Profits and Corrupting Your Health

Major corporations across the tech, pharma, food and energy industries are invoking a new legal strategy, using First Amendment claims to avoid complying with industry regulations, journalist Katherine Li reported in The Lever.

The companies, and their lobbying groups, are invoking the First Amendment’s compelled speech doctrine to argue they can rightfully refuse to share information they deem controversial with consumers and employees.

Under the doctrine, the First Amendment’s free speech protections extend beyond prohibiting the government from suppressing speech — the doctrine also bars the government from compelling people to express ideas or beliefs they don’t want to affirm.

In recent months and years, corporations have invoked this argument to resist regulation on issues ranging from drug pricing to hazardous chemical disclosures, to food nutritional information to censoring online speech.