On Monday, July 1, the U.S. Supreme Court dismissed two cases challenging Republican-backed legislation in Florida and Texas that limited social media firms’ ability to remove information that the platforms considered inappropriate.
The justices ordered subordinate appeals courts to reevaluate their rulings concerning these 2021 statutes that provide the states the power to control the content-moderation policies of major social media companies. Trade associations for the technology sector contested the two regulations on the grounds that they violated the First Amendment’s restrictions on the power of the government to censor free speech.
On the last day of the Supreme Court’s session, which started in October, the decision was made.
Tech trade groups NetChoice and the Computer & Communications Industry Association, whose members include YouTube’s parent company Alphabet, who are also the owners of Google, Facebook, owned by Meta, and the owners of TikTok and Snapchat, Snap, filed a case challenging the regulations.
Subordinate courts disagreed on the matter, maintaining the Texas legislation and obstructing important Florida law provisions. Because of the dispute, neither law has been operative.
The question at hand was whether the First Amendment forbids governments from pressuring companies to post content against their own preferences and protects the social media platforms’ editorial freedom.
The firms claim that their websites would be inundated with spam, bullying, extremism, and hate speech if they did not have this discretion, which includes the power to filter or delete content or users, give priority to some contributions over others, and offer further clarifications.
Under the pretense of content moderation, many Republicans have claimed that social media companies limit conservative views, a practice known as censorship.
The administration of President Joe Biden resisted the legislation in Florida and Texas, claiming that the content-moderation regulations violated the First Amendment by compelling online platforms to display and approve information that they deemed inappropriate.
Florida and Texas officials retorted that these corporations’ content-moderation practices do not qualify as speech and so are not protected by the First Amendment.
The Texas legislation permits users or the Texas attorney general to file a case to enforce it, prohibiting social media corporations with at least 50 million monthly active users from acting to “censor” users based on “point of view.”
The bill from Florida would limit the power of big platforms to block specific content by barring the censoring or banning of a political candidate or “journalistic enterprise.”
The question of whether state regulations that force social media firms to provide users personalized justifications for specific content-moderation decisions—like removing postings from their platforms—illegally restrict their freedom of expression was another issue raised in the cases.
During its current term, the Supreme Court has already discussed free speech rights in the digital era.
On March 15, the Supreme Court said that government employees who block critics on social media platforms may occasionally face lawsuits under the First Amendment.
In a separate ruling, the judges on June 26 rejected a First Amendment challenge to the manner in which U.S. officials promoted the removal of postings considered misleading, particularly those about elections and COVID. As a result, the court declined to place restrictions on the manner in which Biden’s administration may interact with social media platforms.
Following a majority decision against it by the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, located in Atlanta, Florida attempted to reinstate its statute. The business organizations filed an appeal of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals’ ruling in favor of the Texas statute, which the Supreme Court had previously in the case halted. The court is located in New Orleans.
Conservative critics of “Big Tech” companies have used Twitter’s decision to suspend then-President Donald Trump shortly after his supporters attacked the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, as an example of what they called censorship. The company cited “the risk of further incitement of violence.”
Since then, Elon Musk—who now controls the firm called X—has restored Trump’s account. In the US election on November 5, Republican Donald Trump is running against Democrat Joe Biden.
