Around the world, authoritarian governments are increasingly using their courts to reach beyond their borders and punish American speech that is perfectly legal — and constitutionally protected — in the United States. American creators, companies, and everyday internet users are being hit with foreign fines, takedown orders, and judgments simply for hosting or posting content that a foreign regime doesn’t like. Rep. Michael Rulli’s new bill, the Guaranteeing Rights Against Novel International Tyranny and Extortion (GRANITE) Act, would make clear that American courts will not be recruited to help enforce those judgments here at home, and will improve protection of the First Amendment rights of American people and companies.
The Problem: Foreign Courts, American Consequences
Foreign censorship regimes have learned that they don’t need to control an American company’s servers to control its speech — they just need a foreign court willing to issue a fine or order for enforcement by a court within the U.S. From European “disinformation” statutes to authoritarian defamation and blasphemy laws, governments across the globe have shown a growing willingness to target content, viewpoints, and speakers based on what those the government find objectionable, something our First Amendment rights are intended to shield Americans from.
The EU’s fine against X is a clear illustration of this dynamic. In December 2025, the European Commission handed down a $140 million penalty against X — the first formal non-compliance decision under the Digital Services Act — after finding the American platform had breached transparency rules around its verification badge, advertising disclosures, and researcher data access. While the violations cited weren’t really about “content” in the traditional sense, the fine demonstrates how readily EU regulators will levy nine-figure penalties against the U.S.-headquartered company under a law built around speech-related obligations.
Without a clear statutory backstop, nothing stops these foreign judgments from working their way into American courtrooms and being enforced against American people and companies. The result: Americans’ own speech, legal and protected at home, could be silenced simply because a foreign regime disapproved of it,effectively outsourcing censorship decisions to governments that reject the right to free expression online.
What the GRANITE Act Does
Under the GRANITE Act, US domestic courts may not recognize or enforce a foreign judgment, fine, order, or demand that enforces a “foreign censorship law” — defined as a foreign law that targets expression based on content, viewpoint, or speaker identity, compels chilling disclosures, or otherwise would conflict with First Amendment protections if applied here. The bill also gives Americans facing such foreign judgments an affirmative right to go to federal court and seek a declaration that the judgment is unenforceable, and it strips away sovereign immunity as a shield for foreign states seeking to collect on these judgments. In short, it closes the back door that foreign censors have been using to reach into the United States through our own legal system.
How This Protects Free Expression and Free Enterprise
This is not a hypothetical concern. As foreign regulators grow more assertive — and as some foreign frameworks are explicitly designed to have extraterritorial reach — American platforms, publishers, and individual users face real exposure to judgments that would never survive First Amendment scrutiny domestically. Left unaddressed, this dynamic creates a chilling effect far beyond any one country’s borders: platforms and creators may over-moderate or self-censor preemptively just to avoid the risk of a foreign court judgment landing, and being enforced, in the United States.
The GRANITE Act draws a clean, constitutional line: the United States will enforce its own laws and its own constitutional protections, full stop. American courts should never become the enforcement arm of foreign censorship regimes no matter how the foreign judgment is dressed up. It shows the American people that their government will stand up for the right to free expression online regardless of who is attempting to infringe upon it.
The First Amendment governs American speech, not the government of a foreign nation.
Congress should move quickly to pass the GRANITE Act and send a clear signal that Americans’ free expression rights are non-negotiable, and no foreign court’s judgment can change that.