Addiction to Constitutionally Protected Activity: Speech, Press, and Religion

I have a forthcoming article with this title in an Emory Law Journal symposium issue, so I thought I'd serialize it here; there's plenty of time to improve it, so I'd love to hear people's feedback.

The background is, of course, the calls to regulate social media platforms and video games on the theory that they are unduly addictive. You'll see I'm skeptical about that. I start by arguing that similar arguments could be made as to religious practice, but that we should reject such regulations of "addictive" religious practice as violating religious freedom. I then argue that, analogously, we should reject regulations of "addictive" communicative products as violating the Free Speech and Free Press Clauses.

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Introduction

Most behavior that is potentially addictive to some people