When the Karnataka High Court delivered its judgment in X Corp v. Union of India on September 24, 2025, it reaffirmed a familiar constitutional axiom - Article 19 guarantees its freedoms only to citizens, not to corporations, and certainly not to foreign ones.

That may sound routine, even obvious. Yet in today’s digital world, where public discourse is mediated almost entirely by transnational platforms, the reiteration carries deep resonance. The Court’s textual fidelity to the Constitution exposes a new constitutional question: how do citizen-based rights operate in a borderless communication order?

The judgment rests on firm doctrinal ground. Article 19(1) begins with “All citizens shall have the right…” The Court relied on precedents such as Tata Engineering v. State of Bihar (1964) and Bennett Coleman & Co. v. Union of India (1973) to reaffirm that only Indian-incorporated entities, associations of citizens, may invoke Article 19.

Because X Corp is registered in the United States, it cannot claim the protection of the freedom of speech clause. Platforms, the Court reasoned, are facilitators of speech rather than speakers in their own right. This is constitutional orthodoxy in its purest form: a decision that respects both text and precedent.

In many ways, this approach reflects what Lon Fuller described as the “inner morality of law”; the idea that fidelity to clear, predictable rules sustains the integrity of legal order. The Court’s restraint honours that tradition. Yet, as Ronald Dworkin might argue, law’s integrity also demands that interpretation keep faith with the moral purpose of rights that protects freedom as a lived, not merely textual, reality.

The Digital Dilemma

Still, the decision lands in a vastly different communicative universe from that of the framers. In 1950, expression was a direct act: speech, print, or assembly. In 2025, it is almost always mediated through servers, algorithms, and private terms of service.

When the government issues a takedown order to X Corp under Section 69A of the IT Act, it is effectively curtailing the speech of Indian citizens. Yet if the platform itself lacks standing to challenge the order, who defends the citizen’s voice?

The X Corp ruling thus exposes not an error in reasoning, but a structural gap between constitutional design and digital practice.

The Court’s position is clear: lacking citizenship, X Corp cannot assert fundamental rights. In theory, affected users may approach the courts themselves. In practice, however, takedown orders are confidential, and users rarely learn that their content has been removed.

The result is a representation gap, citizens’ rights are restricted, but no one stands in court to contest the restriction. Government power gains insulation, not by intent but by design. Here lies the paradox: in defending the citizen-centric text of the Constitution, the Court may have made it harder for citizens’ rights to find protection in the digital realm.

Jürgen Habermas’s idea of the “public sphere” becomes instructive here. If democracy depends on an open arena of communication where citizens deliberate and dissent, then the intermediaries that enable such discourse, like digital platforms have become essential to the functioning of that sphere. Excluding them entirely from constitutional standing risks narrowing the space where public reasoning can occur.

Indian jurisprudence has encountered a similar issue before. In Bennett Coleman, the Supreme Court allowed a company to invoke Article 19(1)(a) when newsprint controls impeded the freedom of journalists and readers. Protecting the medium, the Court reasoned, was necessary to protect the message.

The Karnataka High Court distinguished that precedent on the ground that Bennett Coleman involved an Indian company. The distinction is doctrinally sound but reveals how constitutional meaning sometimes lags behind technological evolution. Today’s “press” is not a printing press, it is a global digital platform.

Constitutional Fidelity and Policy Foresight

To its credit, the High Court did not seek to rewrite the Constitution to meet new policy challenges. Its restraint underscores judicial discipline: applying the law as it stands. Yet the judgment also reminds policymakers that the framework for regulating digital speech may need recalibration.

Section 69A orders, often issued without transparency, deserve a more structured review process. Parliament, rather than the courts, must now consider how to reconcile national sovereignty with the global architecture of communication. Perhaps the real lesson of X Corp is institutional, not doctrinal: constitutional fidelity must be matched with policy foresight.

By reaffirming that only citizens enjoy Article 19 rights, the judgment anchors our constitutional conversation on democratic belonging, the idea that rights flow from participation in a political community. That principle is sound and worth defending.

But digital citizenship today is layered. Indian citizens express themselves through global tools that are the gateways to constitutional freedoms. Acknowledging this complexity does not dilute sovereignty; it merely recognizes that the architecture of speech has changed.

Platforms are not citizens, but they are the stage upon which citizens speak. A doctrine of derivative or representative standing, allowing intermediaries to litigate in defense of users’ rights, might offer a middle path. It would preserve the citizenship requirement while ensuring that expressive freedoms remain practically enforceable.

None of this requires judicial innovation. Indian law already recognizes representational standing in public-interest litigation. Extending that logic to the digital sphere would align with the Constitution’s spirit, protecting rights even when their holders cannot easily appear before the court.

Such adaptation would not rewrite Article 19; it would reaffirm its purpose, to safeguard the conversation that sustains democracy. In that sense, X Corp v. Union of India is not an endpoint but an invitation, to evolve our constitutional vocabulary for a networked public sphere.

Fidelity with Foresight

The High Court’s judgment is faithful to the constitutional text, measured in tone, and mindful of judicial limits. Its significance lies not in controversy but in clarity. It reminds us that while the Constitution speaks in the language of citizenship, governance in the digital era must operate in the grammar of connection.

Bridging the two is the constitutional task of our times. The challenge is not to abandon fidelity but to pair it with foresight, to ensure that as India deepens its digital sovereignty, the citizen’s freedom to speak, share, and dissent remains the living core of the republic.

The author is Professor of Constitutional Law and Director, University Institute of Legal Studies, Panjab University. The views expressed are personal.