The US Supreme Court on Friday agreed to make a decision the legality of Republican-backed state laws in Texas and Florida that constrain the flexibility of social media corporations to curb content on their platforms that these businesses deem objectionable.
The justices took up two cases involving challenges by technology industry groups who argued that these 2021 laws restricting the content-moderation practices of huge social media platforms violate the Structure’s First Amendment protections for freedom of speech.
Lower courts split on the problem, striking down key provisions of Florida’s law while upholding the Texas measure.
The industry challengers to the laws are NetChoice and the Computer & Communications Industry Association, industry groups whose members include Facebook parent Meta Platforms, Alphabet’s Google, which owns YouTube, in addition to TikTok and X, formerly called Twitter.
CCIA President Matt Schruers called the court’s decision to tackle the case encouraging.
“It’s high time that the Supreme Court resolves whether governments can force web sites to publish dangerous content.
Telling private web sites they have to give equal treatment to extremist hate isn’t just unwise, it’s unconstitutional, and we stay up for demonstrating that to the court,” Schruers said.
Supporters of the laws have argued that social media platforms have engaged in impermissible censorship and have silenced conservative voices particularly.
Advocates of content moderation have argued for the necessity to stop misinformation and the amplification of extremist causes.
President Biden’s administration had told the justices in a court filing that the cases merited review since the state laws burdened the rights of the businesses.
“When a social media platform selects, edits and arranges third-party speech for presentation to the general public, it engages in activity protected by the First Amendment,” the Justice Department said.
The cases test the argument made by the industry groups that the First Amendment protects the editorial discretion of the social media platforms and prohibits governments from forcing corporations to publish content against their will.
The businesses have said that without editorial discretion their web sites could be overrun with spam, bullying, extremism and hate speech.
Conservative critics of “Big Tech” corporations have cited for instance of what they called censorship the choice by the platform previously called Twitter to suspend then-President Donald Trump shortly after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol by his supporters, with the corporate citing “the chance of further incitement of violence.”
Trump’s account has since been reinstated under Elon Musk, who now owns the renamed company.
In signing the law in 2021, Texas Governor Greg Abbott said, “There may be a dangerous movement by some social media corporations to silence conservative ideas and values. That is fallacious and we is not going to allow it in Texas.”
The Texas law forbids social media corporations with not less than 50 million monthly energetic users from acting to “censor” users based on “viewpoint,” and allows either users or the Texas attorney general to sue to implement it.
Florida’s law requires large platforms to “host some speech that they could otherwise prefer to not host” by prohibiting the censorship or banning of a politician or “journalistic enterprise.”
“Online services have a well-established First Amendment right to host, curate and share content as they see fit. The web is a crucial platform without cost expression, and it must remain free from government censorship,” NetChoice litigation director Chris Marchese said.
Officials from Florida and Texas didn’t immediately reply to requests for comment.
Florida is looking for to revive its law after the Atlanta-based eleventh US Circuit Court of Appeals ruled largely against it.
The industry groups are appealing a call by the Recent Orleans-based fifth US Circuit Court of Appeals upholding the Texas law, which the Supreme Court had blocked at an earlier stage of the case.
The Florida and Texas cases are on account of be heard within the court’s recent nine-month term, which begins on Monday.