SCOTUS hears arguments in landmark case on Texas, Florida social media laws

[RAY BOGAN]

The Supreme Court heard oral arguments in two cases that could forever change how social media companies moderate content that users post on their site and whether they can block some users altogether. 

Florida and Texas passed what they described as anti-censorship laws in 2021 as a response to what their state governments said was an anti-conservative bias from the social media platforms.  

The Florida law bans social media companies from deplatforming a political candidate or a journalistic enterprise. The Texas law states a social media platform or interactive computer service may not censor a user based on their viewpoint.

In the Florida case, the Justices will answer whether the first amendment prohibits a state from requiring social media companies to host third-party communications and whether the state can require the companies to notify and provide an explanation to their users if they do censor their speech. 

[HENRY WHITAKER]

“The platforms do not have a First Amendment right to apply their censorship policies in an inconsistent manner and to censor and deplatform certain users,” Henry Whitaker, from the Florida Office of Attorney General, said during oral arguments. 

[PAUL CLEMENT]

“Florida’s effort to level the playing field and to fight the perceived bias of big tech violates the First Amendment several times over. It interferes with editorial discretion, it compels speech, it discriminates on the basis of content, speaker and viewpoint,” Paul Clement, an attorney representing social media companies, told the Justices. 

[RAY BOGAN]

In the Texas case, the justices will decide whether the First Amendment prohibits websites from engaging in editorial choices about whether, and how, to publish and disseminate speech. 

[CLEMENT]

“When editors or speakers engage in viewpoint discrimination, that is their First Amendment right. It is also absolutely vital to the operation of these websites,” Clement said. “Because if you have to be viewpoint neutral, that means that if you have materials that are involved in suicide prevention, you also have to have materials that advocate suicide promotion. Or if you have materials on your site that are proSemitic, then you have to let on materials onto your site that are antiSemitic. And that is a formula for making these websites very unpopular to both users and advertisers.”

[RAY BOGAN]

Here’s where the cases get more interesting. 

Beyond answering those questions – the court is determining whether these laws are entirely unconstitutional under all circumstances, what’s called a facial challenge, or whether the laws are unconstitutional as it applies specifically to the plaintiff in a specific circumstance, an applied challenge. 

There are also questions as to who these laws apply to. Much of the attention falls on social media sites like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, where individuals post text, pictures and videos to be seen by other users. But arguments also touched on whether these laws apply to a host of other sites where individuals post just about anything, including e-commerce sites. 

[SOTOMAYOR]

“This is so, so broad. It’s covering almost everything. But the one thing I know about the internet is that its variety is infinite,” Justice Sonia Sotomayor told Whitaker. 

[RAY BOGAN]

In an amicus brief, Open Market Institute which represents eBay and Etsy wrote: 

“It ought to be fundamental to the First Amendment that a marketplace for handmade t-shirts and coffee mugs should not be forced by a state’s “free speech” regulations to carry “I ♥ Hitler” paraphernalia out of “fairness” to all viewpoints, or even to be forced to explain and justify—with individualized, case-specific reasons—why those views or products were taken down.” 

[Amy Coney Barrett]

“So Florida’s law, so far as I can understand it, is very broad. And we’re talking about the classic social media platforms, but it looks to me like it could cover Uber, it looks to me like it could cover just Google search engines, Amazon Web Service, and all of those things would look very different,” said 

[RAY BOGAN]

A final decision on these cases will come out by June. Both laws were blocked from going into effect while this case gets decided.