The Supreme Court on Monday avoided definitive resolution of challenges to laws in Florida and Texas that curb the power of social media companies to moderate content, rejecting an effort by Republicans to promote such laws against what they say is prejudice. Conservative
Instead, the justices unanimously agreed to return the cases to lower courts for analysis. In the majority opinion, Justice Elena Kagan wrote that the lower appeals court did not properly analyze the First Amendment challenges to the Florida and Texas laws.
After the attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021, President Donald J. The laws were prompted in part by some platform decisions to ban Trump.
Supporters of the law said it was an attempt to combat what they called Silicon Valley censorship. The laws, they added, promoted free speech, giving the public access to all viewpoints.
Opponents said the laws trampled on the platform’s own First Amendment rights and would turn it into a cesspool of filth, hate and lies.
The two laws differ in their details. Florida prevents platforms from permanently banning candidates for political office in the state, while Texas prohibits platforms from removing any content based on a user’s viewpoint.
“To normalize a bit,” Judge Andrew S. Oldham Wrote in the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit Decision upholding Texas lawFlorida law “prohibits All Censorship of Some speakers,” while one of Texas “prohibits Some Censorship of All speaker” based on their thoughts as they express them.
Two trade associations challenging the state laws — NetChoice and the Computer and Communications Industry Association — said the actions Judge Oldham called censorship were editorial rulings protected by the First Amendment, which generally prohibits government restrictions on speech based on content and viewpoint.
The groups said social media companies are entitled to the same constitutional protections enjoyed by newspapers, which are generally 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 Fifth Circuit The order of the lower court was reversed Texas law blocked.
“We reject the platform’s attempt to extract freewheeling censorship from the Constitution’s free speech guarantee,” Judge Oldham wrote for the majority. “Platforms are not newspapers. Their censorship is not speech.
But a unanimous three-judge panel of the US Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit Mostly support A preliminary injunction barring Florida law.
“Social media platforms exercise editorial judgment that is inherently expressive,” Judge Kevin C. Newsom Wrote for the panel. “When platforms choose to remove users or posts, deny content to viewers’ feeds or search results, or allow violations of their community standards, they are engaging in First Amendment-protected activity.”
The Biden administration supported social media companies in two cases, Moody Vs. NetChoiceNo. 22-277, and NetChoice Vs. PaxtonNo. 22-555.
A ruling that tech platforms have no editorial discretion to decide which posts to allow would have exposed users to a variety of viewpoints but would almost certainly amplify the worst aspects of the digital age, including hate speech and misinformation.
The Supreme Court drew on two key precedents to determine where to draw the constitutional line.
one of them, Prunyard Shopping Center Vs. Robbins, since 1980, belongs to a sprawling private shopping center in Campbell, Calif., that includes 65 stores, 10 restaurants and a movie theater on 21 acres. It was open to the public but not permitted, as Judge William H. “Any publicly expressive activity, including the circulation of applications, that is not directly related to its commercial purposes,” Rehnquist said in his opinion for the court.
That policy was challenged by high school students who protested a UN resolution against Zionism and were prevented from handing out pamphlets and gathering signatures for petitions.
Justice Rehnquist, who would be elevated to chief justice in 1986, wrote that state constitutional provisions requiring a shopping center to allow people to engage in expressive activities on its property did not violate the center’s First Amendment rights.
In the second case, Miami Herald Vs. TornillosIn 1974 the Supreme Court struck down a Florida law that allowed politicians a “right of reply” to newspaper articles critical of them.
This case Pat L. Brought about by Tornillo, who was unhappy with colorful editorials in The Miami Herald opposing his candidacy for the Florida House of Representatives. The newspaper said Mr. Tornillo, a labor union official, had engaged in “shakedown statesmanship.”
Chief Justice Warren E. Burger, writing for a unanimous court to strike down the law, said the “vast accumulation of power unobservable in the modern media empire” did not allow the government to usurp the editors’ role in deciding what should be. published.