THE RELIGIOUS LIBERTY SOLUTION TO BIG TECH CENSORSHIP: HOW THE RELIGIOUS FREEDOM RESTORATION ACT LIMITS SECTION 230

Social media companies' rampant censorship in recent years focused public outcry, academic debate, and congressional inquiry on Section 230, which provides broad immunity to these "Big Tech" companies for censoring so-called "objectionable" content. Although Congress originally passed Section 230 in 1996 to reduce children's exposure to internet pornography, increasingly expansive definitions of "objectionable" speech allow Big Tech companies free rein to stifle expression and debate on controversial social and public policy issues. The legal immunity Section 230 confers is broad enough to protect social media platforms from liability for censoring opinions because the companies disagree with them, rather than because the posts expressing them contain obscene material. As a result, Section 230 now operates as a federal-government-provided incentive for private companies to exercise enormous control over public discourse. The burden of censorship often falls hard on religious expression, whether because a social media company disagrees with a certain religious belief or considers certain religious expression not suited to the public sphere. While many propose to overhaul or eliminate Section 230, this Article posits that existing law provides a solution where Section 230 operates to legally insulate the suppression of religious exercise. The Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA)-which protects sincere religious exercise from substantial burdens imposed by the federal government without means narrowly tailored to achieve compelling government interests-operates as a "superstatute" that limits all other statutes. The Congress that passed Section 230 likely never imagined a situation in which it would burden religious exercise. But circumstances have changed in the nearly thirty years since Section 230's passage. Increasingly capacious interpretations of the word "objectionable" enable Big Tech to take Section 230 far beyond its original purpose and burden religious exercise in unanticipated ways. RFRA is designed to operate in exactly this kind of circumstance-ensuring that Congress's actions do not sweep so broadly as to violate its interpretation of the First Amendment, especially in situations Congress could not anticipate. In practice, RFRA operates as a statutorily prescribed canon of construction that limits the immunity Section 230 confers. Because RFRA limits all subsequent statutes not expressly exempted, when Congress created Section 230 immunity