By Nick Karmia and Tufan Neupane

Jacob Mchangama, founder and executive director of the Future of Free Speech at Vanderbilt University, agreed that the First Amendment protects against government actions, not actions by a private employer.

But he said, the lines blur when government officials pressure private employers to punish employees whose views don’t conform to what they want.

“When the government encourages such actions and says that it will essentially go beyond the First Amendment to target people who it says are guilty of hate speech … then I think that is calculated to encourage people to not speak out on things,” Mchangama said.

The administration has applied such pressure.

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Jacob Mchangama is the Founder and Executive Director of The Future of Free Speech. He is also a research professor at Vanderbilt University and a Senior Fellow at The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE).