Supreme Court rejects Florida and Texas social media laws

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday avoided final resolution of challenges to Florida and Texas laws that limit social media companies' ability to moderate content, leaving in limbo a Republican effort to push such laws to redress what it says is bias against conservatives.

Instead, the justices unanimously agreed to remand the cases back to the lower courts for analysis. In her majority opinion, Justice Elena Kagan wrote that neither lower court had adequately analyzed the First Amendment challenges to the Florida and Texas laws.

The law was prompted in part by the decision by some platforms to ban posts by President Donald J. Trump following the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.

Supporters of the law argued that it was meant to combat Silicon Valley censorship, adding that it promotes freedom of speech and gives people access to all viewpoints.

Opponents argued that the law would trample on the platforms' own First Amendment rights and turn them into cesspits for filth, hatred and lies.

The two laws differ in their details: Florida prohibits platforms from permanently banning candidates for state office, while Texas prohibits them from removing content based on users' views.

Generalizing a bit, Judge Andrew S. Oldham of the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, in his decision upholding the Texas law, wrote that while Florida law prohibits all censorship of some speakers, Texas law prohibits some censorship of all speakers based on the views they express.

Two industry groups challenging the state law, NetChoice and the Computer & Communications Industry Association, said what Judge Oldham called censorship was an editorial decision protected by the First Amendment, which generally bars government regulation of speech based on content or point of view.

The groups argued that social media companies are entitled to the same constitutional protections as newspapers, which are free to publish without government interference.

A federal appeals court in 2022 reached conflicting conclusions about the constitutionality of the two laws.

A divided three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit reversed a lower court's order blocking the Texas law.

In his majority opinion, Justice Oldham wrote, “We reject the platforms' attempt to extract arbitrary censorship power from their constitutional guarantees of free speech. The platforms are not newspapers. Their censorship is not speech.”

But a unanimous three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit largely upheld a preliminary injunction blocking Florida's law.

Judge Kevin C. Newsom wrote for the panel that social media platforms exercise editorial judgment that is inherently expressive: When they choose to remove users or posts, deprioritize content in audience feeds or search results, or otherwise punish violations of their community standards, they are engaging in activity protected by the First Amendment.

The Biden administration sided with social media companies in two cases, Moody v. NetChoice (No. 22-277) and NetChoice v. Paxton (No. 22-555).

A ruling that tech platforms have no editorial discretion in deciding what posts to allow would expose users to a greater variety of viewpoints, but it would almost certainly amplify the ugliest aspects of the digital age, including hate speech and misinformation.

The Supreme Court looked to two key cases to determine where to draw the constitutional line.

One such case, Pruneyard Shopping Center v. Robbins in 1980, involved a vast privately owned shopping center in Campbell, California, which covered 21 acres and contained 65 stores, 10 restaurants, and a movie theater. Although the shopping center was open to the public, as Justice William H. Rehnquist stated in his opinion, it did not permit public expression, such as the circulation of petitions that had no direct commercial purpose.

This policy was challenged by high school students opposed to UN resolutions against Zionism, who were prevented from distributing pamphlets and collecting signatures on petitions.

Justice Rehnquist, who became chief justice of the Supreme Court in 1986, wrote that a provision in the state constitution requiring shopping centers to allow people to engage in expressive activities on their premises did not violate the centers' First Amendment rights.

In the second case, Miami Herald v. Tornillo, in 1974 the Supreme Court invalidated a Florida law giving politicians the right to respond to newspaper articles that criticized them.

The suit was brought by Pat L. Tornillo, who was upset about a colorful Miami Herald editorial opposing his candidacy for the Florida House of Representatives, which accused Tornillo, a labor union leader, of extortion practices as a politician.

In a unanimous decision striking down the law, Chief Justice Warren E. Burger said the vast accumulation of unreviewable power in modern media empires does not allow the government to usurp the role of editors in deciding what should be published.

Sources 1/ https://Google.com/ 2/ https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/01/us/supreme-court-free-speech-social-media.html The mention sources can contact us to remove/changing this article

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