NRB sent letters of appreciation to seventeen state attorneys general who wrote to Google chief executive Sundar Pichai to warn the tech giant not to discriminate against crisis pregnancy centers in Google search results.
In June, Democrat lawmakers urged that very course of action, asking Google to suppress information about pregnancy resource centers in search results on the company’s products.
In a strong rejoinder, Republican attorneys general wrote to Pichai on July 21, “If you fail to resist this political pressure, we will act swiftly to protect American consumers from this dangerous axis of corporate and government power.”
Led by Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares and Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron, the seventeen attorneys general assured a robust state response should Google comply with inappropriate demands from lawmakers, writing in part:
Because of the fundamental American values at stake here, if you comply with this inappropriate demand to bias your search results against crisis pregnancy centers, our offices will (1) conduct thorough investigations to determine whether this suppression violates the antitrust laws of the United States and our States; (2) investigate whether Google’s conduct amounts to an unlawful act of religious discrimination under state law; and (3) consider whether additional legislation—such as nondiscrimination rules under common carriage statutes—is necessary to protect consumers and markets.
In NRB’s subsequent letter of thanks, the association wrote:
We could not agree more strongly with your statement that “No American should be silenced because of his or her religious beliefs, especially in order to magnify the message of adherents of other beliefs on the same subject.” Further, your letter outlined specific and actionable steps that you would take to investigate potential violations of state law should Google yield to political pressure in this matter. As advocates for the First Amendment freedoms of all Americans, and Christian communicators in particular, we applaud your response to this threat to free speech and potential antitrust violation, which you identified as “the deployment of monopoly power to suppress the expression of a particular idea, done at the behest of government actors.”
We remain attentive to this issue, and we are prepared to support and amplify your efforts to uphold “viewpoint diversity, free expression, and the freedom of religion for all Americans, and [make] sure that our markets are free in fact, not merely in theory.”
Signees of the multistate letter to Google included Attorneys General Jason Miyares of Virginia, Daniel Cameron of Kentucky, Steve Marshall of Alabama, Mark Brnovich of Arizona, Leslie Rutledge of Arkansas, Todd Rokita of Indiana, Derek Schmidt of Kansas, Jeff Landry of Louisiana, Lynn Fitch of Mississippi, Eric Schmitt of Missouri, Austin Knudsen of Montana, Douglas J. Peterson of Nebraska, John M. O’Connor of Oklahoma, Alan Wilson of South Carolina, Ken Paxton of Texas, Sean D. Reyes of Utah, and Patrick Morrisey of West Virginia.
Read NRB’s full letter here.
