Legal experts say pulling Jimmy Kimmel from air may amount to illegal 'jawboning'

Legal experts say pulling Jimmy Kimmel from air may amount to illegal 'jawboning'

Bobby Allyn

September 18, 2025 / 3:17 pm

As First Amendment scholar Evelyn Douek watched the news unfold of ABC yanking Jimmy Kimmel from air, she was aghast: "The hypocrisy is enough to give one vertigo," she said.

It's shocking to Douek, because she is a close-watcher of what's known as "jawboning," when regulators or government officials pressure private actors, like a social media company or broadcast network, to stifle speech. The libertarian Cato Institute calls the practice "censorship by proxy."

For years, Republicans excoriated social media platforms over their belief that the Biden administration overly pressured Twitter and Facebook to remove Covid misinformation. It spurred a constant dru