This afternoon, Representative Warren Davidson introduced the HOMEFRONT Act, the “Halting Overseas Mandates from Extraterritorially Reaching Onto National Territory Act.”

Note that one of the bill’s original cosponsors, Rep. Jeff Van Drew, sits on the Committee on the Judiciary. For my UK readers, this is the committee with the jurisdiction to advance a foreign censorship shield bill to the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives. This would not be Rep. Van Drew’s first legislative act on this topic; in December, he introduced H. Res. 967, calling on the House to express “disapproval of the European Union’s Digital Services Act and Digital Markets Act, the United Kingdom’s Online Safety Act and Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act, and similar foreign laws[.]”

The HOMEFRONT Act is a GRANITE-style foreign censorship shield bill, the seventh such GRANITE-architecture bill or model policy to be advanced by American legislators in the last seven months, and the third such bill to be advanced in the last ten days. I anticipate there will be even more GRANITE-style bills, both state and federal, in the next several months.

I gave a lengthy treatment to the topic of GRANITE-style bills in my post last week addressing Rep. Michael Rulli’s GRANITE Act. That post sets out the case for why a GRANITE-style bill is needed to protect Americans from foreign censorship. I will not repeat those arguments here at length, as the argument for each bill is exactly the same. They’re in last week’s post if you wish to read them.

What I will say is that Representative Davidson’s bill amply satisfies the criteria of the GRANITE proposals that have come before it. Those of us who have been following the progress of GRANITE should welcome the introduction of the HOMEFRONT Act with open arms.

In terms of where HOMEFRONT fits into the new, but rapidly-growing, ten-month-old American tradition of foreign censorship shield bills, many of Rep. Davidson’s additional provisions hew closely to the original Wyoming GRANITE Act proposal introduced by Rep. Daniel Singh in that state earlier this year. There are also some novel provisions which have never been seen in the foreign censorship shield discourse before today.

As with Rep. Rulli’s bill, I endorse Rep. Davidson’s effort unreservedly.

What follows is my analysis of the Davidson bill. I write here as an analyst and not an advocate for a particular legislative instrument.

Between the two bills, Rep. Davidson’s bill is the more detailed and the more aggressive. Its private cause of action – its “sword” – includes damages language and would, if enacted, have greater deterrent effect than a declaration-only bill. Much of what Rulli’s bill implies is, in Davidson’s proposal, made express.

This does not mean Davidson’s bill is better than Rulli’s, or vice-versa. Each bill, Rulli’s and Davidson’s, makes its own set of political tradeoffs in service of the objective of halting foreign censorship, tradeoffs that will need to be weighed by our representatives in Congress and, ultimately, by the President if either proposal (or some combination of them) is to become law.

My only political objective is to ensure America gets an effective censorship shield that U.S. lawyers can use to halt foreign censorship. In my professional assessment, both Rulli’s federal GRANITE and Davidson’s federal HOMEFRONT would.

The question of what version of a foreign censorship shield to enact and sign into law is, as a working lawyer, one well above my pay grade. That is a question for Congress.

What I can say is that either bill is a dramatic improvement over the present state of affairs and, as a lawyer working in the area of foreign censorship defense, on the ground, either bill, if enacted, would be most useful to that work. Any legislator concerned about the fact that Americans are being threatened by foreign governments over our constitutionally protected expression could, quite safely, vote for either one.

1) Reminder: What is a GRANITE Act?

A GRANITE Act, as the term is commonly used in free speech law circles, does three essential things:

1. The shield: it confirms, in statute, the existing judge-made position on non-enforcement of foreign censorship orders, demands, and judgments under First Amendment doctrine;
2. The sword: if a federal bill, it creates a private right of action, of some type, that can be brought against a foreign censor (this requirement is optional for state bills, as federal supremacy issues that crop up here have proven tricky in the past); and
3. The definitions: it defines “foreign censorship law” and the type of foreign censorship action which engages the shield and, where applicable, the sword in such a way as to address and deter the actual censorship modalities employed by foreign censorship agencies, which are frequently conducted by administrative fiat rather than by judicially-supervised due process.

The HOMEFRONT Act follows this architecture and implements it effectively.

There are at least seven different public versions of introduction-ready bills incorporating various parts of the GRANITE Act architecture in circulation as of today, up from four two weeks ago. In order of their production:

• February 2026: The Wyoming GRANITE Act 2026, HB 70, the first-ever GRANITE bill, which I co-authored with Colin Crossman and Daniel Singh, a sword & shield state bill with extensive federal savings language, introduced in February 2026. It passed the Wyoming House of Representatives 46-12 later that month before stalling in the Senate in the short budget session;
• February 2026: The West Virginia GRANITE Act, a sword & shield state bill, introduced in the West Virginia Senate mere days after Wyoming’s bill, in the short 2026 WV session but did not advance;
• March 2026: The Wyoming GRANITE Act (2027 reintroduction), a shield-only state bill currently in interim study anticipated to be introduced as a committee bill in early 2027;
• July 2026: The ALEC GRANITE Act, a model bill spearheaded by Rep. Daniel Singh adopted by ALEC as a model national policy in July 2026;
• August 2026: The Rulli GRANITE Act, a federal sword & shield bill, the first federal GRANITE bill, filed on August 27th;
• September 2026: The New Hampshire GRANITE Act, filed for numbering on September 1st; and
• September 2026: The Davidson HOMEFRONT Act, the second federal bill implementing the GRANITE sword + shield architecture and the first to do so that includes damages language. (Full bill text.)

Davidson’s bill, as with Rulli’s, amends Title 28 of the United States Code to add a new §4106. Unlike Rulli’s bill, which makes targeted amendments to the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act, Davidson’s new §4106 is an entirely self-contained federal censorship shield statute. It does, however, address the foreign sovereign immunity issue, as I will describe in greater detail below.

My analysis follows.

2) The Davidson Shield: New 28 U.S.C. § 4106(a)(1), (b)

§ 4106(a)(1) of HOMEFRONT is the primary shield language:

Notwithstanding any other provision of Federal or State law, a domestic court shall not recognize or enforce a foreign judgment or order entered pursuant to a foreign censorship law on a United States person unless the domestic court determines that the conduct for which the foreign judgment [or] order was imposed would not have been protected under the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States if it occurred within the United States.

Rulli’s shield is categorical; IF [foreign censorship law] THEN [not enforceable in the U.S.], with the definition of “foreign censorship law” referencing exclusively constitutionally protected speech and conduct.

Davidson’s language makes explicit that a foreign censorship law may be enforced within the United States if “the conduct for which the foreign judgment [or] order was imposed would not have been protected under the First Amendment… if it occurred within the United States.” One possible issue with this language is that it gives a well-funded foreign state, hiring crack FSIA litigators, an opportunity to argue whether the conduct in issue was wholly within the United States or not (see e.g. Doe v. Ethiopia and Broidy Capital Management addressing the commission of certain tortious actions on a cross-border basis over the Internet).

I think categorical language restraining American courts is the simpler approach which potentially leaves open fewer attack vectors to be exploited by the type of expensive FSIA lawyers a foreign state is able to afford. In any case this would be something for House Judiciary to look at in markup.

Davidson’s bill also requires, as the SPEECH Act does, certain threshold jurisdictional criteria to be satisfied for a foreign state to enforce its orders here – see § 4106(b). Unlike the SPEECH Act, which dealt with reciprocal recognition of libel judgments, I query whether this is required as the expected adversary in a foreign censorship enforcement action is (a) a sovereign and (b) would, regardless of justification, therefore be precluded from enforcing its regulations in the U.S. anyway under the revenue rule (see, e.g., Ludlow v. Van Rensselaer, 1 Johns. R. 94 (N.Y. 1806); Moore v. Mitchell, 30 F.2d 600, 600 (2d Cir. 1929)). There should be no lawful reason for a foreign state, even if a censorship law is one of those handful which would be permitted under American law, e.g., a true threat, to seek to enforce its judgments and orders here.

There are of course private rights of action for which such language might be needed; UK censors are already exploring the possibility of deputizing British tort claimants to carry out censorship-by-proxy of American citizens, as reported in the Observer in July, and the GDPR is, even today, capable of being used by private litigants to suppress lawful American political speech (see e.g. certain lawsuits seeking damages under Article 82 of the UK GDPR against X Corp. which, if brought in America, would not survive constitutional scrutiny).

Section 4106(b) is therefore best understood as being applicable to private litigants rather than sovereigns. The drafting should be clarified to make explicit that no foreign state may invoke §4106(b) as a possible route to enforcing a censorship penalty in an American court, even where the underlying conduct would fall outside First Amendment protection, consistent with the existing position on domestic enforcement of foreign regulations.

Sovereigns who need to discuss cross-border enforcement of criminal law should make use of the usual channels, namely a Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty request or extradition request routed through the U.S. Department of Justice or the Department of State, respectively. Both of these channels are also addressed explicitly in HOMEFRONT (new §4106(e) and §4106(f), respectively).

3) Definition of “Foreign Censorship Law” – New 28 U.S.C. § 4106(j)

If we then turn to Davidson’s definition of “foreign censorship law” to which the provisions of his bill relate under 4106(j)(2), we find the following:

‘(2) The term ‘foreign censorship law’ means a law of a foreign country that imposes liability for conduct that would be protected under the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States if the conduct occurred in the United States, including restrictions related to online safety, hate speech, misinformation, disinformation, harmful content, compelled disclosure of user information, and other similar restrictions.

A couple of points:

• I think this definition is an effective one.
• The terms “online safety, hate speech, misinformation, disinformation, harmful content” call back to the House Judiciary Committee’s several years of hearings on this topic. As these are not categories of speech which have any legal meaning in U.S. First Amendment doctrine I query whether they might be better off unmentioned.

This brings us to the types of orders Davidson’s bill is meant to cover, addressed in new 4106(j)(1):

(1) The term ‘foreign judgment or order’ has the meaning given such term in section 4101 and includes a subpoena, an order, an administrative action, a demand, a fine, and any other similar measure issued by a foreign court.

This definition expressly calls back to the provisions of the original SPEECH Act and adds that an order includes “a subpoena, an order, an administrative action, a demand, a fine, and any other similar measure issued by a foreign court.”

The only real drafting nit I have with the bill is in this section. At the end of § 4106(j)(1) I would add “…or a foreign state” to ensure that (alleged) foreign sovereign instrumentalities like Ofcom and foreign administrative agencies like the European Commission or the German BfJ are covered, so it would read:

(1) The term ‘foreign judgment or order’ has the meaning given such term in section 4101 and includes a subpoena, an order, an administrative action, a demand, a fine, and any other similar measure issued by a foreign court or a foreign state.

A further amendment may be required to incorporate the definition of “foreign state” from 28 U.S.C. § 1603(a) into new § 4106 by reference, which would include both the foreign state, any political subdivisions of the foreign state, and any instrumentalities thereof.

4) Additional Components of the Davidson Shield

Davidson’s shield includes several additional elements, a number of which are entirely new to the “foreign censorship shield” discourse.

A) Section 230 backstop at new 4106§(c).

This language reads:

(c) JUDGMENT AGAINST PROVIDER OF INTERACTIVE COMPUTER SERVICE.—

(1) IN GENERAL.—Notwithstanding any other provision of Federal or State law, a domestic court shall not recognize or enforce a foreign judgment or order described in subsection (a)(1) against the provider of an interactive computer service, as defined in section 230 of the Communications Act of 1934 (47 U.S.C. 230), unless the domestic court determines that the judgment or order would be consistent with section 230 if the information that is the subject of such judgment or order had been provided in the United States.

And

(2) BURDEN OF ESTABLISHING CONSISTENCY OF JUDGMENT.—The party seeking recognition or enforcement of the foreign judgment or order shall bear the burden of establishing that the judgment is consistent with such section 230.

Perfection. 10/10, no notes.

This language is completely new to the foreign censorship discourse and represents an excellent addition. Davidson’s bill states that foreign judgments against interactive computer service providers are unenforceable unless consistent with 47 U.S.C. §230, thus transposing three decades of Section 230 doctrine into the shield directly.

Keeping in mind that §230 itself descends from the First Amendment principle in Smith v. California, 361 U.S. 147 (1959), so this should be an uncontroversial inclusion and will be immediately legible to counsel for American platforms who are accustomed to applying §230 protections to their platforms here at home.

B) Appearance non-waiver, new §4106(d).

This language reads:

An appearance by a party in a foreign court rendering a foreign judgment or order to which this section applies shall not deprive such party of the right to oppose the recognition or enforcement of the judgment or order under this section, or represent a waiver of any jurisdictional claims.

Completely new to the discourse.

This is a very thoughtful addition that reflects the reality of litigating cases in this area under current law. This language, if enacted, would make it clear that appearing in the foreign proceeding, or the mere existence of a foreign proceeding, doesn’t waive a U.S. target’s right to resist recognition or jurisdictional objections in an American court. This aims at comity and forum non conveniens arguments we would expect to see in litigation against foreign sovereigns seeking dismissal of U.S. court actions challenging their rulings here, as have been made by each of the foreign sovereign defendants in both the 4chan Community Support LLC and Trump Media cases.

This would also allow U.S. companies to challenge the applicability of foreign laws offshore while continuing to benefit from the American shield. Where 4chan, Trump Media and Technology Group, and Rumble flat-out refused to acknowledge the legitimacy of foreign regulatory process at all, other U.S. companies have gone on offense in the foreign forum. See e.g. Wikipedia and Meta, which have both challenged the applicability of various Ofcom determinations under the UK Online Safety Act in the High Court of Justice in London (and Wikipedia lost); Reddit, which challenged the Australian Online Safety Act in the Australian High Court; or X Corp, which challenged a fine determination under EU Digital Services Act in the European General Court. Without this language, the foreign censor could argue in subsequent U.S. proceedings that a foreign court was first seised of the matter (lis alibi pendens) and that the U.S. court should therefore decline to hear the action. Section 4106(d) would permanently foreclose that argument.

C) Executive branch non-cooperation with foreign censorship orders, new §4106(e).

Previously seen in the Wyoming GRANITE Act 2026, HB 70. Davidson’s bill federalizes it, which of course is the context where it can be maximally effective. It reads:

No officer or employee of the United States or of any State or unit of local government may assist a foreign government in investigating or enforcing a foreign censorship law against a United States person, if the applicable conduct would be protected under the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States if it occurred in the United States.

This will prevent the U.S. government from collaborating with foreign states to censor Americans under foreign censorship law. Query whether “Notwithstanding any other treaty obligation of the United States,” should be added to the beginning of the graf to address foreign abuses of any MLAT procedure and make it clear that where any MLAT is concerned, Congress intends for this language to prevail. This language does not include a right of action against state officers, which proved controversial in Wyoming as part of HB 70 and is not part of the reintroduced 2027 bill there.

D) Extradition protections, new §4106(f).

Also previously seen in Wyoming’s HB 70, here the concept has been federalized, where it can be most effective. The language reads:

Notwithstanding any other provision of law or any treaty obligation of the United States, a United States person may not be extradited from the United States to a foreign country in connection with the violation of a foreign censorship law for conduct that would be protected under the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States if it occurred within the United States.

This would protect Americans from such absurdities as the Head of the Metropolitan Police threatening Americans over their tweets, or UK Ofcom threatening Americans with jail time for running platforms lawfully in the United States (both of which, for avoidance of doubt, have actually happened). This is a very valuable addition.

5) The Davidson Sword: Comprehensive FSIA Disapplication and Damages – New §4106(g)

The Davidson bill contains the following language for the “sword” component of GRANITE: a private right of action, that disapplies foreign sovereign immunity, and provides for the award of attorney’s fees and damages, under new §4106(g).

Notwithstanding chapter 97, any United States person against whom a foreign judgment or order described in subsection (a)(1) is entered may bring an action in an appropriate district court of the United States seeking a declaratory judgment that such foreign judgment or order is unenforceable under subsection (a), injunctive relief, reasonable attorney’s fees, and statutory damages in the amount of $25,000.

Nice.

Breaking that down, line by line:

• This is very close to the maximal “sword” called for by Wyoming’s HB 70 in February 2026, including declaratory relief, injunctive relief, fees, and statutory damages. The only material difference is the quantum of the statutory damages floor, which here is fixed at $25,000 and in Wyoming was set at a floor of $1 million.
• If we assume that 4106(j)(1) applies only to foreign court orders (per the drafting nit), HOMEFRONT’s sword would activate not when the foreign threat is communicated to a U.S. person, but rather only when Ofcom actually determines and communicates a final fine, penalty, or other determination to a U.S. person and then seeks entry of judgment which it subsequently obtains.
• If 4106(j)(1) is expanded to include a “foreign state,” then HOMEFRONT’s trigger for the private right of action would likely activate when the threat or demand or order is transmitted into the United States, as with Rulli’s bill.
• In my view, the most effective way to structure the “sword” is for the private right of action to activate when the threat is transmitted, not when the judgment is entered.
• Rulli’s GRANITE sword is triggered when the demand is “served or purportedly served;” Davidson’s is when the order is “entered.” Keeping in mind that foreign censorship is often conducted through extrajudicial means, and threats alone are often enough to obtain compliance from an American target, one issue for the Judiciary Committee to consider is whether service of the demand (or purported e-mail service of the demand) is what triggers the right of action.
• On the question of foreign sovereign immunity, the entirety of the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act – “notwithstanding chapter 97” – is proposed to be disapplied in the case of an action brought under the HOMEFRONT Act’s sword provisions. This presumably includes both the FSIA’s baseline jurisdictional immunity as well as execution immunity under §§ 1609-1611.
• The treatment of the FSIA is different from what one historically encounters in Congress’ previous decisions to create novel exceptions to immunity conferred under FSIA. The FSIA enshrines the so-called “restrictive theory” of foreign sovereign immunity and, historically, any deviations are by way of explicit and narrow exceptions. One could foresee a major court fight about whether the language reaches execution and attachment provisions of the FSIA. This is a fight most foreign governments would likely very much wish to avoid.
• The total loss of sovereign immunity including execution immunity for attempts to censor Americans, if enacted, would be likely to be an extremely effective deterrent to the use of foreign censorship laws against American citizens.
• Whether any final bill is more explicit about the specific question of execution immunity is a question for Congress.

6) HOMEFRONT’s Provisions for Congressional Monitoring of Foreign Censorship

One issue I have had, as a practitioner, in our fight against foreign censors is to ensure Congress has all of the relevant data it needs to address this problem.

HOMEFRONT provides for systematic reporting to Congress of foreign censorship attempts, thereby solving this problem by ensuring Congress is kept up-to-date with foreign attempts to threaten American companies. This is a real problem: based on UK Ofcom’s numbers, revealed in a FOI request, and my own personal records from my own caseload, there have been at least 200 such attempts in the last 18 months. Even on just my own cases, federal officials have seen only a fraction of the inbound censorship attempts I have handled.

New §4106(h) provides for the Attorney General to provide an annual report to the Judiciary and Foreign Affairs committees on foreign censorship instances, compliance costs, and, notably, “whether any agreements, treaties, or other cooperative arrangements… are still in the interests of the United States to maintain” (a standing MLAT and extradition treaty review mandate).

This would act as an effective deterrent on the abuse of the MLAT procedure, as has occurred in the case of France’s attempt to compel testimony from Elon Musk and Linda Yaccarino for, in part, speech and conduct which is protected by the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. There are correct uses of MLATs and there are incorrect ones; working in foreign censorship defense as long as I have, I have seen some howlers. This information should be known and disclosed to Congress on a continuing basis.

New §4106(i) creates a public database to be maintained by the Federal Trade Commission of U.S. speech censored or targeted by foreign law, thus shining sunlight on a process that foreign censors should prefer to remain confidential.

7) Conclusions

The HOMEFRONT Act is the most detailed foreign censorship shield bill introduced to date, at any level of government. It is even more comprehensive in the foreign censorship vectors it covers than the original HB 70 GRANITE Act proposal in Wyoming from earlier in the year.

It is the only proposal which contains an effective, nationwide, bar on executive cooperation and extradition. It is the only proposal which contains the full stack of remedies – including attorney’s fees, damages, and injunctive relief – that would be enforceable fully in any federal court in the United States.

It is one of two proposals currently before the House. The House Judiciary Committee should take up this issue for consideration, and should do so immediately.

Each bill would be independently worthy of enactment. Either would represent an improvement on the status quo.

Congress would do well to pass either one, and it should do so as soon as possible.