Supreme Court sends Texas and Florida social media regulation laws back to lower courts
The Supreme Court on Monday vacated two judicial decisions concerning Republican-backed laws from Florida and Texas aimed at limiting social media companiesâ ability to moderate content.
The Supreme Court is sending both cases back to the lower courts for further review, noting that lower courts had failed to properly analyze the First Amendment challenges to the laws.
âThe question in such a case is whether a lawâs unconstitutional applications are substantial compared to its constitutional ones,â Justice Elena Kagan wrote in the decision. âTo make that judgment, a court must determine a lawâs full set of applications, evaluate which are constitutional and which are not, and compare the one to the other,â Kagan wrote. âNeither court performed that necessary inquiry.â
Both of the laws were adopted in 2021 and aimed to address complaints from conservatives who believed that social media companies like Facebook and X (formerly Twitter) were illegally censoring conservative political views. The concerns were heightened when Facebook and X suspended former President Donald Trumpâs accounts following the January 6 attack on the Capitol building.
The laws aimed to block social media companies from removing certain political posts or accounts.
NetChoice, a lobbying group for the tech industry, sued to overturn the laws, arguing that they violated the platformsâ speech rights. The group also argued that the laws grant the government too much power over content published on privately-owned social media platforms.
Lower courts ruled differently on the laws, as key measures of Floridaâs law were blocked while the Texas law was upheld. However, neither law has gone into effect and both laws were put on hold pending the Supreme Courtâs decision.