Brandon Johnson’s Unconstitutional Internet Tax Won’t Stave off Chicago “Death Spiral”
It's unlikely Mayor Johnson's social media tax would survive a court challenge
Chicago's self-professed "progressive" mayor, Brandon Johnson, is still desperately grasping at tax-hiking straws to solve his billion-dollar budget hole, and at least one of them seems blatantly unconstitutional. But even if it passed and withstands court challenges, it won't stave off Chicago's Johnson death spiral.
One of Johnson's schemes to bring in even more money into his greedy hands is a per user tax on social media outlets. The rapacious spender has pipe dreams of a 50 cent per user, per month tax on outlets such as Facebook, X, and other social media companies.
He even gave this cash grab a fancy, Orwellian moniker, calling it the Social Media Amusement & Responsibility Tax, or SMART tax.
"Responsibility" is an amusing flourish, there, considering it is he, rather than the social media companies, that lack any sense of responsibility, at least where taxes are concerned.
Johnson claims that the tax will "raise" $31 million in new taxes that he wants to throw at "mental health services," WMAQ-TV reported.
"For far too long, we have allowed social media companies to collect our data and sell it for profit. They’ve implemented more and more aggressive strategies to get Chicagoans addicted to their apps. As a result, we have seen significantly higher trends of depression, anxiety and mental illness – especially in our young people," Johnson proclaimed in a statement. "This has become a serious public health issue, one that was acknowledged by the Surgeon General. And just like we tax other addictive vices that are bad for our health like nicotine and tobacco, it is far past time we treat social media companies the same way. That’s why we are putting forward this new tax – the first of its kind in the nation – that will tax social media companies to fund our network of city-run free mental health clinics and our mental health crisis response teams."
If one was taking bets, it’d be smart to wager social media companies would simply install a blackout on Chicago users instead of paying such an absurd tax. But that is if the city even tries to put it into effect. Because most analysis seems to assume the tax would fail in court and be deemed an unconstitutional attack on the news media.
Granted, social media is not exactly unequivocally branded as "news media" by legal precedent or law and thereby exempt from being signaled out for special taxation, but there have been enough precedents already that would lead one to assume that such a determination isn't far off. The truth is, social media has been labeled a faction of the "news media" by the courts already.
For instance: Last year, the U.S. Supreme Court extended press protection to social media on First Amendment grounds by ruling that government can't force Facebook or X and others to ban or to carry content government officials want or don’t want.
This ruling came in response to lawsuits by Republican-led states that accused social media of censoring the speech and posts of conservative users in acquiescence to demands by the Biden administration that center-right ideas be squelched or outright banned. Consequently, Texas and Florida passed laws attempting to force the companies to toe state-sponsored guidelines on content moderation. This, the social media companies said, violated their freedom of speech to moderate their content how they want, just like news agencies do, according to the Freedom of the Press Foundation.
Eventually, the U.S. Supreme Court knocked back the attempts by states to force content moderation policies on social media companies and said such state policies violate their First Amendment rights.
SCOTUS citied a 1970s case (Miami Herald v. Tornillo) that held news media has the right to engage in their own editorial and content moderation policies without interference by the government. So, the high court essentially extended that protection once afforded to the media to social media outlets.
With all that being said, the media is also protected in another way from special targeted taxation. The internet as a whole was given blanket protection from such taxation with the Permanent Internet Tax Freedom Act of 2016, which bans any "discriminatory taxes" on electronic commerce.
Despite that, the state of Maryland tried to enact such a tax, anyway. And it got tossed. So, it doesn't look good for Johnson's absurd idea, either. Any attempt to place a special tax on social media seems doomed for defeat in the courts.
Meanwhile, city residents will officially be paying the highest sales taxes in the entire U.S.A., and at 10.50 percent will eclipse Seattle's 10.35 percent when the new rates take effect.
And now that Illinois has ushered in the highest property taxes in the nation, Chicago residents are bracing themselves after Johnson's continued threats of also raising the city's property taxes, especially since he had his pet corporate employee head tax shot down by the City Council’s Finance Committee, which rejected his head tax plans.
One would think that Johnson might catch a hint that things are already not going well for the city’s business sector. After all, business in Chicago has now dropped for the 23rd straight month, according to the Illinois Policy Institute. But Johnson just can’t stop assuming the business sector is a fatted calf he needs to slay.
Finally, as I keep saying, the one thing that would begin to help solve these budget problems seems to be completely off the table as far as Johnson is concerned. Spending cuts just don’t seem to be an option the mayor will consider. But it should be the first option.
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