No one should be surprised that a federal judge ruled legislation passed by the state Legislature in the end-of-session rush last June unconstitutional.

Assemblyman Andrew Goodell, R-Jamestown, certainly isn’t. His argument against A.7865A/S.4511 on the Assembly floor last June 1 focused very clearly on the ways the bill violated the First Amendment right to freedom of speech.

“I think this bill needs to be narrowed so that we meet constitutional objectives while recognizing that our country has been built on a foundation that encourages robust and sometimes uncomfortable speech,” Goodell said last June.

Judge Andrew Carter agreed, using the same legal logic Goodell articulated some eight months earlier in his Feb. 14 decision. In his view, the legislation was not narrowly tailored to achieve the state’s purpose nor did it articulate a compelling governmental interest to limit constititionally protected speech.

It’s interesting that the lawsuit overturning the hate speech law was heard not by an appointee of Presidents George W. Bush or Donald Trump but by an appointee of President Barack Obama who had been supported by Sen. Charles Schumer. This wasn’t a partisan-backed rebuke that came after the plaintiffs shopped their case to find a friendly judge. Quite the opposite, the Democrats’ bill was ruled unconstitutional by one of their own.

In the future, Democrats shouldn’t be so quick to dismiss Republicans’ questions about a bill’s constitutionality. Had they listened to Goodell and his fellow Republicans last June, the state could have crafted a better bill that actually follows the First Amendment instead of trying to trample it.