A constitutional battle is brewing in Minnesota after a bipartisan coalition of elected officials have proposed a state constitutional amendment to prohibit free speech rights for artificial intelligence agents. Critics argue the amendment could also apply such bans to people who use AI tools to create their own speech.
The name of the proposed state senate bill is SF 4114. It was introduced on March 4, 2026, and it was referred to the Committee on Judiciary and Public Safety for consideration. It states that Minnesota voters in the 2026 general election should decide the following question: “Shall the Minnesota Constitution be amended to state that artificial intelligence does not have the right to free speech?”
The issue at hand
The coalition of lawmakers is presenting SF 4114 as part of a package of proposed laws that attempt to rein in perceived problems related to AI applications. One proposed bill seeks to ban the use of AI chatbots by minors under the age of 18. Another Minnesota senate bill would require businesses to disclose that an individual is communicating with an artificial intelligence agent and offer the chance to interact with a human instead. (Other states have also pursued similar laws.)
The lawmakers’ efforts to regulate speech attributed to AI applications has drawn a good deal of attention within the state and outside of it.
In one editorial, Sen. Erin Maye Quade, a sponsor of SF4114, defended criticism of the bill. “The First Amendment protects human beings from being punished by the government for their speech. AI programs aren’t people, they are platforms built by people,” she wrote.
Quade cited the example of a lawsuit filed after a Florida teen’s suicide that claimed an AI chatbot took an active role in his death. Character.AI, the company that owned the chatbot, claimed the chatbot’s speech was protected by the First Amendment. A federal court rule against the company’s free speech claims, and the lawsuit was later settled out of court.
“Do you want to live in a state where a tech billionaire can release an app that encourages your child to die by suicide and be protected from punishment by Minnesota’s Constitution? I don’t,” Maye Quade asked.
Maye Quade posed similar questions at a press conference that introduced the legislation. “The way that consumer-facing AI has been rolled out is a five-alarm fire for our society,” Quade said in a report from The Center Square. “It has devastating consequences and deadly consequences for both humans and our constitutional rights.”
Concerns about overregulation of free speech
However, others believe the Minnesota amendment and its wording goes beyond the public safety issues raised by Maye Quade and other leaders.
John Coleman, legislative counsel for the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), told The Center Square that the proposed Minnesota amendment could affect a variety of artificial intelligence applications in use by people.
“AI isn’t an independent speaker,” Coleman told the website. “It’s a tool that people use to write, research and communicate ideas. It’s an expressive tool, and the people who develop and use it retain their free speech rights.”
Coleman noted that free speech protections extend to people who use many tools used to communicate thoughts and ideas, “whether that's a printing press, a camera, the internet or AI.” Coleman worried about the extent of such regulations. "If lawmakers can carve out AI today, other modern communication tools could be next.”
Kevin Frazier, an adjunct research fellow at the Cato Institute, has voiced similar concerns about the proposed Minnesota amendment, adding that one core question was the conflict between the language of SF 4114 and the basic First Amendment free speech rights stated in the U.S. Constitution.
“The traditional understanding of state constitutions is that they can serve as an additional source of liberty for citizens by providing clarity and further guarantees of certain rights,” Frazer writes. “Minnesota legislators want to instead inhibit individual freedom via a constitutional amendment that would exclude AI from the state’s guarantee of the ‘right to freely speak, write, and publish sentiments.’”
“It’s fair to guess that members of the Founding Generation would not look fondly upon a state trying to reduce the use of a tool that allows more people to exchange more ideas and pursue additional knowledge,” he concluded
Efforts in other states and at the national level
The debate in Minnesota is just one of many across the country about the growing impact of artificial intelligence.
According to Multistate, a government affairs tracking service, more than 1,500 bills related to artificial intelligence have been introduced in state legislatures as of March 2026, compared with 1,208 in 2024 and 635 in 2023. (About half of the states tracked by Multistate allow proposed laws to be carried over from the previous year.)
In Pennsylvania, lawmakers have introduced a bill to ban the use of AI-generated voices in political advertisements. A proposed law in Florida would restrict the use of artificial intelligence in providing psychological, clinical, counseling, and therapy services. And in recent years, lawmakers in at least 47 states have passed laws regulating deepfakes, or the use of AI to create a false but realistic audio or video of people doing or saying things they did not actually do.
The Trump administration has also addressed the issue of AI and free speech in proposing a National AI Legislative Framework to Congress in March 2026. “The federal government must defend free speech and First Amendment protections, while preventing AI systems from being used to silence or censor lawful political expression or dissent,” the policy states as one goal.
Of broader importance is the administration’s goal of having Congress pass laws that preempt state laws related to many uses of AI. “A patchwork of conflicting state laws would undermine American innovation and our ability to lead in the global AI race,” it argues. “Preemption must ensure that State laws do not govern areas better suited to the Federal Government or act contrary to the United States’ national strategy to achieve global AI dominance.”
Scott Bomboy is the editor-in-chief of the National Constitution Center.
