The GRANITE Act could alleviate some pressure on technology firms, which frequently conclude that the effort to push back against foreign censorship requests isn’t worth the trouble.
When Russia designated the Human Rights Foundation as “undesirable” earlier this year, the New York City–based nonprofit anticipated what would follow. In September, the HRF received a directive demanding that Russians be blocked from accessing its hallmark Tyranny Tracker. Yet the order did not originate in Russia; it came from WP Engine, a web hosting company headquartered in Austin, Texas.
“What unsettled us was that an American company passed that demand along to us without hesitation as if it created a legal obligation,” says Javier El-Hage, chief legal and policy officer at HRF. Roskomnadzor, the Kremlin’s censorship authority, contacted WP Engine with a request to block Tyranny Tracker from Russia. WP Engine complied, informing the HRF that if it did not geo-block Tyranny Tracker, the hosting provider would “geo-block the site on [the HRF’s] behalf.” An American firm censoring an American nonprofit at the behest of a foreign government—relaying the order as though it were a routine library notice overdue for return.
The Guaranteeing Rights Against Novel International Tyranny and Extortion (GRANITE) Act seeks to prevent this. Introduced in the House by Rep. Michael Rulli (R–Ohio) in August and currently pending in the Judiciary Committee, the bill would codify in law that U.S. courts will not enforce foreign censorship orders, and it would permit individuals to sue foreign censors for attempting to suppress the protected speech of American citizens. The former serves as a shield; the latter as a weapon.
“Foreign governments threaten Americans with penalties ranging from arrests to fines, sending notices directly to U.S. citizens,” says Preston Byrne, the technology attorney who first conceived of the GRANITE Act last year. The Act’s aim is to “invert the cost-exchange ratio in favor of the American defendant against the foreign censor,” he explains.
In practical terms, the GRANITE Act would empower Americans to seek a declaration from a U.S. judge that a particular foreign censorship order is unenforceable. The foreign censor, dragged into an American courtroom, would incur substantial legal fees and face rigorous procedures like discovery and appeals. These burdens are reciprocal, but Byrne notes that the American party would likely be represented pro bono by a free-speech attorney, a commitment Byrne himself has upheld in similar free-speech disputes.
The GRANITE Act would also relieve some strain on tech companies, which may conclude, as WP Engine did, that contesting foreign censorship demands isn’t worth the effort. Compliance teams at technology platforms largely determine what people can view online—and they frequently comply with foreign censors. As Byrne put it, “What occurs within the compliance departments of tech firms heavily shapes the internet we all experience.”
Russia is not the sole nation exporting censorship. Between February 2025 and April 2026, the British government’s communications regulator, Ofcom, issued at least 197 notices to U.S. companies under its internet censorship framework. “When a nuclear-armed G7 member state signals it will arrest you for exercising your free speech rights, generally speaking you yield,” Byrne observes. The GRANITE Act does not ban such yielding outright, but it would provide statutory protections to American firms that choose not to comply.
Some opponents of the GRANITE Act argue that it could prompt other countries to retaliate with even harsher censorship. Yet the bill would regulate only U.S. courts, leaving foreign governments with little to retaliate against directly. And governments from Britain to Russia are already escalating censorship efforts even without GRANITE’s passage.
If a foreign country seeks to unilaterally block its citizens from accessing a given website, Americans are not obligated to assist. U.S. companies should focus on U.S. law and should not become enforcers for foreign censors.
“The American public deserves clear standards that ensure U.S. companies do not become conduits for authoritarian censorship, and that situations like this are not repeated,” El-Hage asserts. The GRANITE Act would be a meaningful first step in that direction.
