(UPDATE, 4 DECEMBER 2025 – this is version 3 of the Wyoming GRANITE Act. We are currently on version 7, with updates to e.g. include intergovernmental organizations like the European Union in addition to foreign states. I expect the final bill to be posted on the Wyoming legislature’s website within a few weeks, although this may move around a bit more depending on what happens with an expected federal bill. A New Hampshire bill is also advancing in tandem, and reportedly the U.S. House of Representatives is also working on its own GRANITE Act.)
The Wyoming GRANITE Act, the first foreign censorship shield bill ever conceived in the history of the United States, was filed for numbering in the State of Wyoming today by Representative Daniel Singh.
I have managed, through my global network of spies, to obtain a copy of the bill in its current draft form.
This proposed law is derived from this proposal I wrote a month ago after being prompted by Reps. Keith Ammon and Calvin Beaulier in New Hampshire, who are working to introduce the GRANITE Act in the Granite State. Exactly one month and one day after putting this proposal down in a blog post, a bill inspired by that post has been filed in a state legislature.
1 down, 49 to go.
I call this law the “Pro-Free Speech Death Star” because of the following provisions:
- The law shields Wyoming companies, individuals, servers from foreign censorship.
- The law prohibits Wyoming state entities from collaborating with foreign censorship orders. This has been a problem in the past at the federal level – the Biden Admin served German censorship orders under the NetzDG to American citizens.
- The law contemplates a carve-out at the federal level from the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act that would give American trial lawyers a damages turbolaser – the greater of treble actual damages, $10 million (adjusted for inflation) per threat communicated to a Wyoming victim, or 3x the quantity of any threatened fine – that can be recovered, jointly and severally, in a civil action against a foreign sovereign, a foreign censorship agency, and anyone who works for those agencies to carry out foreign censorship targeting a Wyoming-situs victim.
- So in 4chan’s case, e.g., six letters, six threats, $60 million in damages.
- In Meta’s case, a threat to impose a 10% global revenue fine == $16.4 billion; if you triple that, you’re looking at a $49.2 billion damages claim against the UK sovereign itself.
- The UK has £47 billion in sovereign assets in custody at American banks that a U.S. court could reach and seize to satisfy any judgment.
- Those assets must remain in the United States otherwise FX markets for the UK’s currency, the Pound Sterling, will seize up and the UK economy will be severely disrupted.
If enacted, the shield would be fully effective without the FSIA carveout. The turbolaser, to be fully operational and have maximum deterrent effect, needs Congress. The ball is now in Congress’ court. I am optimistic that the states moving off the plate here will prompt federal action.
This bill has a long way to go until it becomes a law – it’s got to make it through legislative services, then to Committee, and then get introduced on the floor for a vote – but the important thing is, the journey of this concept, the idea of a foreign censorship shield law which also creates a civil cause of action against foreign censors, into law has begun.
For the first time, state legislators are moving to implement rules that will allow U.S. citizens to strike back – hard – against foreign countries that want to interfere with Americans’ civil rights online.
If we get corresponding federal action, this law – and laws like it – could represent the single greatest victory for global free speech in thirty years. Even without federal action, state-level laws like this would provide significant relief to American companies looking for protection from foreign censorship regimes. In either case, laws like this could deliver a near-fatal wound to the global censorship-industrial apparatus that it would not be able to recover from for decades, by eliminating a tool that the global pro-censorship movement has increasingly relied upon, over the last 10 years, to try to censor Americans: foreign coercive state power.
Many thanks to Colin Crossman, Rep. Singh, and a handful of other contributors for taking my v 0.1 and turning it into an absolutely outstanding law reform proposal, one that would be an excellent model for any other state in our great nation.
