On the last day of Pride Month, June 30, the court ruled to allow discrimination, under particular circumstances, against same-sex couples. By a majority of 6 to 3, the Court agreed that a web designer who opposes same-sex marriage could lawfully refuse to provide services for same-sex weddings.

This is just one in a litany of recent legislative and political assaults on LBGTQ+ rights. Conservative legislatures around the world have been targeting LGBTQ+ people, and especially transgender people, by denying them access to healthcare, dictating which public facilities are available to them, preventing them from speaking about their LGBTQ+ identities and, in the most severe cases, criminalizing their very existence. Here we reflect on Coda’s latest coverage of global LGBTQ+ rights and the trends these stories illuminate.

Florida, United States

In Florida, Governor Ron DeSantis continues to target transgender youth through restrictive legislation, banning access to gender-affirming care to all children under 18 and dictating which books Floridians can read and which bathrooms they can use. 

Reporting from Tallahassee, Rebekah Robinson tells the story of one family whose lives have been upended by the state’s anti-trans legislation. Milo, 16, and his family have made the difficult decision to leave their home and move 1,200 miles away, to Connecticut, to ensure that Milo can continue to access the medical care he needs. 

It’s not just limited healthcare access that has forced Milo’s family to move. With the expansion of DeSantis’ Parental Rights in Education Bill — the so-called ‘Don’t Say Gay’ law — teachers in Florida can no longer discuss gender and sexuality in the classroom. In addition, trans people in Florida are now prohibited from using public bathrooms consistent with their gender identity.

Florida may be only one state out of 50, but Republican legislation hostile toward transgender youth is popping up all over the U.S and will likely be a hot button political issue right up to the 2024 presidential elections. 

Russia

While Russia has recently dominated international headlines thanks to an attempted mutiny by Wagner Group leader Yevgeny Prigozhin, the Russian legislature has also been quietly cracking down on trans rights. A bill is making its way to President Vladimir Putin’s desk that will ban all gender-affirming care for transgender Russians. 

Tamara Evdokimova spoke with Russian psychologist Egor Burtsev to understand what effects a blanket ban on gender-affirming care would have on the trans community. If the bill passes as expected, trans people in Russia will not be able to access life-saving treatments, ranging from psychological care to hormone therapy to surgeries. This will trigger a nationwide mental health crisis and likely provoke violence against transgender Russians. 

Russia’s ban on transition-related care marks the latest escalation in Putin’s war against Western values. In November 2022, he signed a law prohibiting any activities that discuss or promote LGBTQ+ relationships. As Russia continues to wage war in Ukraine and further isolates itself from the West, vulnerable communities inside the country will face ever-greater risks of discrimination, violence and erasure.

India

Mirroring Vladimir Putin’s “family values” rhetoric, India’s government, led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, has also been advocating against LGBTQ+ rights when it comes to marriage, arguing that permitting same-sex marriage would undermine Indian values. Some Indians have profited enormously by appealing to long-standing prejudice in Indian society against LGBTQ+ people, a prejudice seemingly endorsed, or at least tolerated, by the government. 

Alishan Jafri reports from northern India to tell the story of Trixie, a young transgender woman whose mother pushed her to undergo conversion therapy with a YouTube guru. Santosh Singh Bhadauria, better known as the “YouTube Baba,” specializes in conversion therapy and livestreams “healing” sessions to tens of thousands of viewers. Similar to televangelists, Bhadauria is a “godman,” a self-styled guru who has persuaded his followers that he possesses spiritual powers. 

Conversion therapy is illegal in India, and anyone subjected to it, as Trixie was, can take legal actions against the likes of YouTube Baba. The court system might offer some recourse to trans Indians, but with a federal government that advocates conservative, anti-LGBTQ+ views, homophobia and transphobia continue to prevail in many parts of the country.

Uganda

In March, Uganda virtually outlawed LGBTQ+ identity by criminalizing same-sex relationships. The 2023 Anti-Homosexuality Bill imposes draconian penalties for engaging in same-sex relationships, discussing one’s LGBTQ+ identity and renting or selling property to LGBTQ+ people — and institutes the death penalty for sexual assault and for having sex with people under 18.

And this is not the only law targeting gay people in Uganda, Prudence Nyamishana writes. The Assisted Reproductive Technology Bill, first proposed in 2021, targets Ugandans seeking fertility treatment by requiring them to be legally married in order to qualify for treatments. This bill heavily constrains the reproductive rights of unmarried women and LGBTQ+ people who want to have children, as Ugandan law does not recognize same-sex marriage. 

Both bills underscore a push among Ugandan legislators to align national laws with their notions of “morality,” rooted in Christianity — or, as the legislation’s opponents suggest, Christian fundamentalism. 

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This is what the Kremlin wants Russians to think happened when the battle-hardened mercenaries of the Wagner Group swept through Russia, unopposed, for over 600 miles before its leader, Yevgeny Prigozhin called off the march to Moscow. 

As Wagner’s supposed coup attempt unfolded, Prigozhin became the undisputed star of the global news cycle. A former Kremlin caterer, Prigozhin, once an elusive figure, gained world renown following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. As Wagner soldiers took on an increasingly prominent role on the frontlines, Prigozhin’s acerbic, angry rants about the incompetence of generals and legislators arguably represented the only sustained evidence that Russians were unhappy with how the war was going.  Given Prigozhin’s adept use of Telegram, it made sense that he would seize the initiative through his now infamous Telegram voice notes, effectively offering listeners a blow-by-blow account of his troops’ journey to Moscow.

But now that the uprising has seemingly fizzled out — with Prigozhin apparently having negotiated safe passage to Belarus — the Kremlin is scrambling to gain control of the narrative. According to Maria Borzunova, an independent Russian journalist who hosts a show debunking Russian state propaganda, Kremlin pundits on state TV have, so far, parroted four key narratives to explain the coup. 

First, the propagandists argued that the Russian military strike on the Wagner camp — which Prigozhin says precipitated his ill-fated march on Moscow — was staged. They also suggested that no one in Rostov-on-Don, the city Wagner briefly occupied, supported the mercenaries. This claim relies on a few shaky videos of Rostov residents confronting Wagner fighters. It also completely ignores widely circulated evidence of crowds in Rostov cheering Prigozhin’s private army. 

During the rebellion, and in the days since, state propaganda channels have also continued to remind viewers that Prigozhin’s actions played into the hands of Russia’s enemies, in particular Ukraine. But it is in the way pro-government talking heads describe the bewildering resolution to the standoff that is most instructive. 

According to the Kremlin’s version of events, the Russian people rallied behind Putin, displaying unity and resolve and undermining the enemy’s — likely foreign-funded — plot to bring Russia to her knees. “Their argument is that the civil war did not succeed because everyone rallied around the president,” said Borzunova. “However, this is not entirely true.” In fact, during the Wagner advance, a number of government officials recorded identical videos with the same text: “We support the president in this difficult situation.” Instructions for what they should write on social media were circulated to officials, Borzunova explained, and even then, some failed to publish the template text. 

On June 27, Russian President Vladimir Putin gave an unannounced speech, his third in four days. Having already addressed the nation, he separately addressed the soldiers, who, he said, “have protected the constitutional order, the lives, security and freedom of our citizens, kept our homeland from descending into turmoil and stopped a civil war.” He handed out some medals and held a moment of silence for the pilots who were killed by Wagner mercenaries. 

No state channels carried this particular speech live, but Russian state media received a written set of guidelines for reporting on it. Independent media outlet Meduza managed to obtain these instructions. 

The document prompts reporters to refer to Wagner mercenaries as “rebels,” “traitors” and “false patriots,” whose actions could have plunged the country into chaos. It dubs the security forces “the real defenders of Russia” who worked to bring about a peaceful resolution. Putin, the guidelines remind journalists, is considered to be a “real leader” who prevented a “negative scenario of turmoil.” The explanation for Wagner’s sudden retreat is simple: The traitors realized that the Russian army “was not with them” and agreed to solve the conflict “without shedding blood.” 

The word “Prigozhin” is notably absent from the guidelines. Putin, too, has meticulously avoided mentioning Prigozhin in all his recent speeches — a tactic reminiscent of his well-documented refusal to utter the name of jailed opposition politician Alexei Navalny.

Russian state propagandists have largely mimicked this rhetoric. “When virtually no one in society and in the government supported the rebellion, it became clear that the march on Moscow was meaningless,” said state TV presenter Dmitriy Kiselyov two days after the uprising. “Russia has once again passed the test of maturity, and the stronghold of unity has remained unshaken.” Russia’s commissioner for human rights, Tatyana Moskalkova, dubbed the uprising a lesson that “has once again demonstrated that Russia is undefeatable when it is united.” 

As for Prigozhin, he has been branded a traitor, a label he is unlikely to ever shake. This was a complicated narrative shift for many Kremlin pundits to execute, Borzunova told me. Prigozhin had been loyal to Putin, and many in the government and state media shared the grievances he levied at the defense ministry before the uprising. 

Still, the propagandists, though shaken, have quickly fallen in line. The rebellion has been quashed, the brave Russian soldiers commended and the coup leader mercifully exiled. Of course, the picture of unity that the Kremlin propaganda is working hard to paint is a fantasy. “The fabric of the state is disintegrating,” wrote Andrei Koleniskov, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center. Prigozhin’s actions were “an antecedent of civil unrest unfolding in real time.” 

And while speculation about the longevity of Putin’s regime continues around the world, the Kremlin propaganda machine keeps spinning its wheels, trying to narrate its way out of a crisis. The media guidelines that accompanied Putin’s recent speech emphasized the narrative that “the huge media machine of the rebels” attempted to destabilize the situation in the country. Evidently, it will take an equally powerful blitz of state propaganda to put Russia back on track. 

“Propaganda is doing everything to say that Wagner fighters are patriots, they were used,” said Borzunova. “Prigozhin is the main villain. Whether this works or not, we’ll see.”

The campaign to villainize Prigozhin is far from over. On June 28, Putin acknowledged, for the first time ever, that the Wagner Group had been financed out of Russia’s state budget for the past year, to the tune of $2 billion. “I do hope that, as part of this work, no one stole anything,” Putin said, in a clear signal that Prigozhin — still reeling from last week’s “armed mutiny” criminal charges, which were dropped — might be charged with financial crimes next. In fact, independent Russian journalist Dmitry Kolezev reported on June 29 that the Kremlin has now decided to focus its information campaign on the “commercial” character of Prigozhin’s rebellion. “Allegedly, there was no political dimension to the rebellion at all,” Kolezev wrote. “It was all for money.”

If the Kremlin succeeds at convincing Russians that Prigozhin’s actions were a money-grabbing ploy, then the rebellion that, only days ago, seemed existential for the regime might actually strengthen Putin’s hand. 

When every viable alternative to Putin — from the pro-Western, liberally-minded Navalny, formally jailed for fraud, to the Kremlin loyalist who took Bakhmut — is only after the nation’s coffers, there really is no alternative. Or so the Kremlin would have Russians believe. 

CORRECTION [06/30/2023 11:19 AM EDT]: The original version of this story said that Maria Borzunova hosts "Fake News." Borzunova is the former host of "Fake News" and currently hosts her own show debunking Russian propaganda.

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The ban on legal and medical gender transition marks the latest escalation in Russia’s crackdown on LGBTQ+ rights. In November 2022, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a law prohibiting any activities that promote “non-traditional sexual relationships,” effectively outlawing any books, films, media and online resources that discuss LGBTQ+ people.

The bill outlawing gender-affirming care must still pass through Russia’s upper house of parliament and be signed by Putin, but in the event of its likely adoption, it will prevent transgender people from accessing life-saving treatments, ranging from psychological care to hormone therapy to voluntary surgeries. 

According to Egor Burtsev, a clinical psychologist who has worked with transgender and LGBTQ+ patients in Russia for over 10 years, the abolition of gender-affirming care amounts to “torture.” 

Burtsev, who left Russia in April 2022 out of concern for his safety and now lives in Lithuania, worries that the new law will precipitate a mental health crisis in Russia’s trans community, amplify the stigma that LGBTQ+ Russians have long faced and trigger violence against transgender people in Russia. To better understand the far-reaching consequences of a ban on gender-affirming care, I spoke with Burtsev on Telegram. 

This conversation has been edited for length and clarity. 

The Russian parliament has passed a law banning legal and surgical sex changes. What impact will this have on access to medical and psychological care for transgender people? 

What they are proposing is a complete abolition of gender reassignment procedures, surgeries and hormone therapy for transgender people. It is a complete ban. What consequences will this have? Transgender people remain, but the procedures are banned. A transgender person — someone who has been undergoing hormone therapy for 10,15 years, who’s looked completely different for a long time, socialized in a completely different way — is suddenly deprived of the possibility to receive hormone therapy. The body changes, not quickly, but it changes, there are all kinds of reversals, transformations. And the relationship with one’s body, for transgender people, is quite complicated. What we will see is the highest risk of depression, the highest risk of self-harm, the highest risk of suicide.

All possible channels of any kind of medical care will be cut off. Transgender people are not going anywhere. They can’t change how they feel, what their gender identity is, because the authorities ordered it. They're being thrown overboard. And I would equate this to torture: depriving transgender people of medical care, hormone therapy and any psychological help that might have been available before.

Trans people have been left completely without help and in a terrible position of fear, humiliation, discrimination, stigma.

Russia is not the only country adopting laws against gender-affirming care. In the U.S., for example, Florida recently passed a bill that made it illegal to provide gender-affirming care to trans children under 18. From a medical perspective, is it necessary to have any restrictions on who, and at what age, should be able to undergo a gender transition?

There is a wave of such anti-gender movements in the world right now. Conservatism and neoconservatism are coming to the fore. The wave of anti-trans movements is sweeping the world, and Russia has actively, happily joined in. Even some quite democratic countries are not succeeding on this front right now. But that doesn't mean that this situation won’t change, because democracy works somewhat differently. Democracy doesn’t work like this, with one vulnerable group receiving help while another gets discarded.

As for helping trans children under 18, that’s a very controversial issue. There is no uniform policy on this. It’s understandable that the first feeling the idea evokes is probably bewilderment: ‘How can we allow something like this to happen before a child turns 18?’ But as a psychologist who’s worked mostly in Russia, where gender transition was allowed from the age of 18, I usually recommend to parents to simply provide support, to call the person by their name and use their pronouns. And according to statistics, this dramatically reduces the risk of suicidal behavior — just accept the child, call them what they like. 

It is important to give people the right to decide for themselves, from a certain age, what will happen with hormone therapy and to give endocrinologists the opportunity to help people intelligently, clearly, taking into account their circumstances. 

Based on what you’ve seen in your practice, what have been some of the challenges — medical, interpersonal, social — for transgender people in Russia?

The first problem has to do with socialization. It begins with a person becoming aware of themselves and bringing themselves before society — this is the coming-out process. And the first problem is usually related to acceptance: by family, friends, colleagues, classmates and so on. Of course, there's the constant stigma. There is also a huge problem with accessing healthcare that has always been there. 

Because the stigma is so layered, so varied, trans people experience different challenges. Often  they experience trauma, stress and suicidal ideation. Episodes of depression can be pretty severe. A large percentage of transgender people experience depressive states. Anxiety is also extremely common. All of this happens because the stigma and the discrimination all over the world, and especially in Russia, are quite strong. 

Can you briefly explain the legal and medical process that a trans person in Russia needed to go through if they wanted to transition, before this law was passed? 

The transition procedure in Russia was one of the best in the world. We were even a little proud of it, because in recent years, Russia was preparing to adopt ICD-11. This is the 11th revision of the International Classification of Diseases, in which ‘transsexualism’ is excluded from the list of psychiatric conditions. The removal of this psychiatric diagnosis was a huge victory for the trans community. Plus, with the exclusion of this diagnosis, the procedure for changing one’s gender marker has been simplified in many countries. That is, people simply come in, declare their desire to transition and have different procedures. 

We had commissions in Russia that issued permits [to transgender people]. The commission consisted of a psychiatrist, a clinical psychologist and a sexologist. People came before these commissions, had conversations and were diagnosed. Afterwards, they received written permission to change the gender marker in their passport without any legal obstacles. The procedure was quite humane. Before that, less than 10 years ago, this process still required surgery. You had to have at least one surgical procedure. And, in many countries of the world, this requirement still remains.

There has been a lot of talk from the Russian government about protecting “traditional values.” Putin often says that soon, in the West, children will have a “Parent #1” and a “Parent #2,” instead of a mom and a dad. 

One of the major problems that Putin and some other politicians — or, rather, the entire State Duma — have is that they don't pay attention to science-based approaches. They don't look at the science, they don't look at the research, they don't know what they're proposing. They just engage in populism in the service of power. 

The whole world is moving toward greater diversity, there is no stopping it. We see it in our teenagers — who are 15-16 years old, who are not interested in politics because of their age, who are more interested in relationships and their own identities — and in how they construct their identities, how they look at relationships, how they experiment. They have a much more open view on things. The world, for them, is much more multilayered, not black-and-white like it is for government representatives, who tend to be quite old.

Does the government’s position reflect prevailing attitudes toward transgender people? 

I think in many ways it does. Because there is such a thing as propaganda, and propaganda shapes the average Russian’s public opinion. And if propaganda works, then quite a few people really are transphobic, homophobic. I'm afraid there will be a lot of violence against LGBTQ+ people and against transgender people. There will be murders, there will be violence. It's very scary. It's a nightmare.

So, fearing exactly that, LGBTQ+ people are now panicking and trying to escape to somewhere else. But trans people tend to be financially disadvantaged. It's very hard for them to move, they don't have the right documents, they don't always have passports. They find themselves trapped inside [Russia] with this society. 

But there is an alternative, there are, of course, people who are more progressive, who think for themselves. Some have left for now, but many have stayed in the country. They just shut down, they keep quiet, they don't actively speak out, because staying safe right now is paramount. As soon as there is a chance to exhale, we will hear those voices. And I really hope that someday the situation will begin to change for the better. We must all work together to change it.

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“Something shady is going on,” said the lawyer at one point.

Little about the atmosphere indicated the stakes: $11 billion, the fate of Nigeria’s economy and a decision that could legitimize the practice of assigning moral responsibility for one country’s corruption inside the courtroom of an entirely different country.

The court case originated in Nigeria in 2008, when the nation’s president at the time, Umaru Musa Yar’Adua, decided to end gas flaring in the Niger Delta. Gas flaring involves the burning of natural gas associated with oil extraction and was responsible for heavily polluting communities in the region. Instead, Yar’Adua instituted a policy of channeling the gas into salvaging Nigeria’s perennially ailing electricity sector.

P&ID, a firm registered in the British Virgin Islands and controlled by two Irish nationals with no experience in the oil sector, a skeletal staff and no website, approached the Nigerian government with an unsolicited proposal to refine the wet gas released when extracting oil. According to an agreement signed in January 2010, the Nigerian government would transfer gas for 20 years to a facility which was to be built by P&ID. The company would refine the gas for Nigeria for free. Nigeria would use the gas for power generation and P&ID would make a profit by selling the by-products on the international market.

But neither Nigeria nor P&ID laid a single brick toward fulfilling their contractual obligations, resulting in a lengthy legal tussle that has divided opinion about where responsibility lies when foreign businesses engage in shady deals with former government officials in developing countries. The resulting case shines a spotlight on an international system that can be seen to favor Western companies over poorer nations.

A London tribunal in 2017 found Nigeria guilty of a breach of contract and awarded P&ID $6.6 billion as compensation for what could have been its profit if the deal had materialized. Nigeria refused to comply with the judgment. With interest, the payout ballooned to $11 billion, which amounts to one-third of Nigeria’s foreign reserves, or 10 times its current health budget.

The devastating potential liability that the lawsuit imposes on Nigerian citizens is not widely known by the public. But there is a generally held consensus among Nigerian experts and academics that the country is the victim and that P&ID was in cahoots with corrupt government officials to fleece the country’s resources.

“It is a scam, from the onset, the whole transaction from the beginning was enmeshed in an unclear situation which could be attributed to corrupt practices by both parties,” said Chima Williams, the executive director of Environmental Rights Action/Friends of the Earth Nigeria.

Nigeria’s central allegation in the case is that the initial contract was always a con in which neither party would perform their side of the bargain and then a sham arbitration would be held, according to Helen Taylor, a legal researcher at Spotlight on Corruption. Nigeria has insisted that P&ID officials — Michael Quinn, who is now deceased, and Brendan Cahill — deliberately worked with officials to defraud Nigeria and bribed the country’s legal representative who negotiated the contract and then again during the arbitration process.

“It is obvious that the so-called contract, coming from the background that the company lacks the profile, the experience, the pedigree even to establish such a kind of business transaction shows there is more than meets the eye in the whole transaction,” said Olarenwaju Suraju, the chairman of the Lagos-based Human and Environmental Development Agency.

In a 2020 U.K. High Court ruling granting the Nigerian government the opportunity to challenge the arbitration case, the judge, Sir Ross Cranston, said that there was strong evidence the contract was obtained through bribes as part of a scheme to defraud Nigeria.

Questions swirl around how a business deal that was supposed to revolutionize Nigeria's energy sector became a threat to the stability of Africa’s biggest economy. According to a detailed 2019 Bloomberg story, Quinn had been involved in numerous failed contracts bearing a resemblance with the P&ID contract.

Quinn circulated among top-ranking military officials in Nigeria including Theophilus Danjuma, Nigeria's former chief of army staff, and former Nigerian presidents Yar’Adua and Olusegun Obasanjo.

Through these connections, Quinn won a contract in 2001 worth tens of millions of dollars to upgrade British tanks for the Nigerian army, but the parts were never delivered. Almost a decade later, Quinn was involved in a 5-million-dollar contract to repair jets and aircraft for the Nigerian Airforce. The Nigerian Airforce reneged on the deal, and Quinn, who by then had become partners with Cahill, took the case to a Nigerian arbitration court. They lost.

In the P&ID contract, the seat of arbitration was the United Kingdom.

“Anti-corruption campaigners have long warned that courts and international arbitration tribunals in the U.K. and elsewhere are being used by criminals to launder money,” said Nick Hildyard, the founder and director of the Corner House, an advocacy group focusing on human rights and the environment. “This is achieved through seeking court orders that monies are due on the fake contract,” he said.

The idea that the fate of a huge chunk of the Nigerian economy can be decided in a Western court is seen by many in the Nigerian government as a legacy of colonialism. Outside Nigeria, experts say the case is less an extension of colonialism but instead points to culpability among those same Nigerian government officials.

Everyday Nigerians and business people understand that the case “isn’t about colonial legacy but about Nigerian officials and all their kleptocratic inklings,” said Matthew Page, an expert on Nigeria at Chatham House, an international affairs think tank in London.

And for Nigerian analysts and academics, it is a classic case of transnational businesses having too much sway in developing countries.

“This is the kind of scheme by some of these companies, that still operate with their colonial imperial mentality, to sign contracts with many of the developing countries and partners when they are very much aware that their process of contract agreement is actually a product of fraudulent concoction,” said Suraju of the Human and Environmental Development Agency.

Nnimmo Bassey, the former executive director of Environmental Rights Action, is in agreement. “Transnational corporations are quickly assuming imperial powers and actively procure rules that favor them against nations,” he said.

In 2016, Argentina was forced to pay out over $4 billion to a group of hedge funds following a 14-year battle — which included the seizing of an Argentine military ship in Ghana — over a debt the country had defaulted on in 2001 during a disastrous depression. Argentina’s hand was finally forced when a U.S. judge blocked the country from paying other creditors until the hedge funds had been paid. The case was an example of the immense pressure that can be brought to bear on governments dependent on having unfettered access to the global financial system.

Reports that the VR Capital Group, a private equity firm specializing in distressed assets whose subsidiary bought a 25% stake in P&ID following their arbitration win in 2017, might go down this route by seizing Nigeria’s assets abroad has rattled Nigerian government officials.

International investment agreements are “highly problematic” because they strip “national governments of sovereignty and effectively give investors the upper hand,” said Hildyard of Corner House.

The Nigeria case is less about corruption in Nigeria and more about the U.K. legal system, said Taylor from Spotlight on Corruption. “This was an arbitration held in London, involving London-based lawyers, and it’s the legitimacy of that system which was allegedly abused to cover up and give a veneer of legal legitimacy to what is alleged to be a corrupt deal,” she said.

In 2020, the U.K. Home Secretary Priti Patel urged Nigeria to pay P&ID, infuriating Nigerian analysts. “I find continuities between this sham contract and previous sham protectorate contracts that were not only signed under dubious circumstances but also that exploited the significant power disparity and vulnerability of leadership unaccountability and poor oversight,” said Akin Oyewale, an assistant professor of international politics at the University of Warwick.

As Nigeria prepares for a crucial presidential election this month, the prospect of a debilitating payout will be a major issue to contend with. The next president is set to inherit a battered economy struggling with rising inflation, a heavily depreciating currency and an inability to service national budgets. But the posture that Nigeria is a victim of past corruption is also a message that is very well received by business people in the country.

The trial will end in March 2023 and it will be months before a decision is made. If the judge rules in favor of P&ID, it will no doubt provoke outrage within Nigeria. Anger is unlikely to deter P&ID and its backers, who have been dogged in their pursuit of a lucrative judgment. The case has garnered little interest in the U.K., which does not bode well for anyone seeking to reform the country's legal system that they see as facilitating the exploitation of poorer countries.

Correction: an earlier version of this story stated the court will come to a decision by March 2023. It is unknown when a decision will be made.

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After the decision, red states moved quickly to ban or severely limit access to the procedure. This made the virtual sphere uniquely important for people seeking information about abortion, especially those living in states that have outlawed the procedure with little or no exceptions. 

Google searches for abortion medications increased by 70% the month following the court ruling. People flocked to social media platforms and websites with resources about where and how to end a pregnancy, pay for an abortion or seek help to obtain an abortion out of state. 

Despite state laws criminalizing abortion, these digital spaces are legally protected from liability for hosting this kind of content. That’s thanks to the landmark Section 230 of the 1996 Communications Decency Act, the 26 words that are often credited with creating today’s internet as we know it. Thanks to Section 230, websites of all kinds are protected from lawsuits over material that users might post on their platforms. This legal shield allows sites to host speech about all kinds of things that might be illegal — abortion included — without worrying about being sued.

But the future of 230 is on shaky ground. Next month, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear oral arguments on a case that challenges the scope of the landmark internet law. The Court’s decision could have sweeping consequences for digital speech about abortion and reproductive health in a post-Roe America. 

THE BACKGROUND

When armed ISIS assailants staged a series of attacks in central Paris in November 2015, an American college student named Nohemi Gonzalez was among the 130 people who lost their lives. Her family has since taken Google (the owner of YouTube) to court. Their lawyers argue that the tech giant aided and abetted terrorism by promoting YouTube videos featuring ISIS fighters and other material that could radicalize viewers and make them want to carry out attacks like the one that killed Nohemi. Central to the case is YouTube’s recommendation algorithm, which feeds users a never-ending stream of videos in an effort to keep them hooked. Independent research has shown that the algorithm tends to promote videos that are more “extreme” or shocking than what a person might have searched to begin with. Why? Because this kind of material is more likely to capture and sustain users’ attention.

Section 230 protects Google from legal liability for the videos it hosts on YouTube. But does it protect Google from legal liability for recommending videos that could inspire a person to join a terrorist group and commit murder? That is the central question of Gonzalez v. Google. If the Supreme Court decides that the legal shield of Section 230 does not apply to the recommendation engine, the outcome could affect all kinds of videos on the platform. Any video that could be illegal under state laws — like abortion-related content in the post-Roe era — could put the company at risk of legal liability and would probably cause Google to more proactively censor videos that might fall afoul of the law. This could end up making abortion and reproductive health-related information much harder to access online.

If this all sounds wonky and technical, that’s because it is. But the Court’s decision has the potential to “dramatically reshape the internet,” according to Eric Goldman, a professor at California’s Santa Clara University School of Law specializing in internet law. 

Algorithmic systems are deeply embedded in the architecture of online services. Among other things, websites and social media platforms use algorithms to recommend material to users in response to their online activity. These algorithmic recommendations are behind the personalized ads we see online, recommended videos and accounts to follow on social media sites and what pops up when we look at search engines. They create a user’s newsfeed on social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter. They have become a core feature of how the internet functions.

WHAT ARE THE STAKES IN A POST-ROE AMERICA?

If the Supreme Court rules in the plaintiffs’ favor, it could open up a vast world of possible  litigation, as websites and platforms move assertively to take down content that could put them at legal risk, including speech about abortion care and reproductive health. Platforms then would face the threat of litigation for recommending content that stands in violation of state laws  — including, in thirteen cases, laws against abortion. 

“That's going to dramatically affect [the] availability of abortion-related material because, at that point, anything that a service does that promotes or raises the profile of abortion-related material over other kinds of content would no longer be protected by Section 230, would be open for all these state criminal laws, and services simply can't tolerate that risk,” Goldman explained. 

In this scenario, technology companies could not only be exposed to lawsuits but could even find themselves at risk of criminal charges for algorithmically recommending content that runs afoul of state abortion bans. One example is Texas’ anti-abortion “bounty” law, SB 8, which deputizes private citizens to sue anyone who “aids or abets” another person seeking an abortion. If the Court decides to remove Section 230’s shield for algorithmic amplification, websites and platforms could be sued for recommending content that helps a Texas resident to obtain an abortion in violation of SB 8. Most sites would likely choose to play it safe and simply remove any abortion-related speech that could expose them to criminal or legal risks.

The abortion information space is just one realm where this could play out if the Court decides that Section 230’s protections do not apply to algorithmic promotion of content. Anupam Chander, a law professor at Georgetown University who focuses on international tech regulation, explained: “Making companies liable for algorithmically promoting speech when they haven't themselves developed it will lead to the speech that is most controversial being removed from these online services.”

Goldman had similar concerns. “We’ve never had this discussion about what kind of crazy things could a state legislature do if they wanted to hold services liable for third-party content. And that's because Section 230 basically takes that power away from state legislatures,” he said. “But the Supreme Court could open that up as a new ground for the legislatures to plow. And they're going to plant some really crazy stuff in that newly fertile ground that we've never seen before.”

Consider the #MeToo movement. Section 230 protects platforms against defamation lawsuits for hosting content alleging sexual harassment, abuse or misconduct. Without the law’s shield, the movement could have had a different trajectory. Platforms may have taken down content that could have exposed them to lawsuits from some of the powerful people who were subjects of allegations.

“That kind of speech, which we have seen the internet empower over the last decade in ways that have literally reshaped society, would lead to the kind of liability concerns that would mean that it would be suppressed in the future,” Chander added. “So, when someone claims that Harvey Weinstein assaulted them, companies are in a difficult position having to assess whether or not they can leave that up when Harvey Weinstein's lawyers might be sending cease and desist and saying, ‘we're going to sue you for it for defamation.’” 

Proponents of Section 230, who have long argued that changing or eliminating the law would end up disproportionately censoring the speech of marginalized groups, are hoping to avoid this scenario. But it’s hard to predict how the Supreme Court justices will rule in this case. Section 230 is one of the rare issues in contemporary American politics that doesn’t map neatly onto partisan or ideological lines. As I reported for Coda in 2021, conservative and liberal politicians alike have taken issue with Section 230 in recent years, introducing dozens of bills seeking to change or eliminate it. Both U.S. President Joe Biden and former president Donald Trump have called for the law to be repealed. 

“This is not just a left-right issue,” Chander explained. “It has this kind of strange bedfellows character. So I think there's a real possibility here of an odd coalition both from the left and the right to essentially rewrite Section 230 and remove much of its protections.”

If the Supreme Court decides that platforms are on the hook legally for recommendation algorithms, it may be harder for people seeking abortions to come across the information they need, say, in a Google search or on a social media platform like Instagram, as those companies will probably take down (or geoblock) any content that could put them at legal risk. It feels almost impossible to imagine this scenario in the U.S., where we expect to find the world at our fingertips every time we look at our phones. But that reality has been constructed, in large part, on the shoulders of Section 230. Without it, the free flow of information we have come to expect in the digital era may become a relic of the past — when abortion was a constitutional right and information about it was accessible online. The Supreme Court’s decision on this tech policy case could, once again, turn back the clock on abortion rights.

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