Source: VTDigger

Senior U.S. District Judge William K. Sessions III issued a preliminary injunction barring Vermont Attorney General Charity Clark’s office from enforcing a civil investigative demand against Hank Poitras over a June 7 AI-generated video titled “Mark Helps Vermont Take Out The Trash.” The judge described the video as having a “ridiculous nature,” found Vermont’s interest in safeguarding electoral integrity diminished where the material is an unrealistic satirical video, and concluded Poitras was likely to prove the investigation violated his First Amendment rights.

Act 75, enacted in March to regulate deceptive synthetic election material, requires certain AI-generated media that injures a political candidate and is published within 90 days of an election to carry a disclaimer identifying it as digitally manipulated; Poitras posted the video without such a disclosure two months before Vermont’s Aug. 11 primary. Sessions found the video appeared to qualify for the law’s satire/parody exemption. The attorney general’s office had offered to close its probe if Poitras added a disclosure, but Poitras sued on July 8 alleging five First Amendment violations and one Fourteenth Amendment violation. The injunction is narrow — applying only to the June 7 video and the resulting investigative demand — leaving the broader constitutional challenge to Act 75 unresolved and marking the first major court test of Vermont’s synthetic-media law.