IT’S A LONGSHOT (FOR NOW): Republicans have a new tool to fight deplatforming: common carriage laws.

The idea was laid out in detail in April, when Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas issued a concurring opinion as the court declined to hear a case on former President Trump blocking people on Twitter. The case itself was moot for procedural reasons, but Thomas took it as an opportunity to write in support of classifying social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter as “common carriers,” the same classification that net neutrality rules use for telecom providers.

“There is a fair argument that some digital platforms are sufficiently akin to common carriers or places of accommodation to be regulated in this manner,” Thomas wrote in his opinion last month. In theory, common carriage would ban platforms from unfairly discriminating against speech, .

Thomas’s opinion has no legal force, but it was enough to get Republicans in Congress to pay attention. In the wake of the opinion, Sen. Bill Hagerty (R-TN) introduced the 21st Century FREE Speech Act, which combined the usual Section 230 repeal with a new effort classifying social media platforms as common carriers.

“This is more than just a messaging bill or an empty gesture,” Mike Davis from the Internet Accountability Project said in a statement soon after the bill was released last month — although any time someone has to say it’s not an empty gesture, you should probably be skeptical.

I am skeptical, but mostly because the people benefiting from deplatforming are the same people holding the reins of power in Washington.