The Supreme Court has agreed to assess the legality of two hotly-debated state laws in Texas and Florida, designed to manage how social media giants such as Facebook and X (previously termed Twitter) handle content on their platforms. These laws, which surfaced in 2021, were conceived in response to governmental concerns that these companies were suppressing users, predominantly those espousing conservative views. The companies hold that such laws infringe upon their First Amendment rights.
The laws under review were ratified by Texas and Florida legislators in 2021. Texas’ H.B. 20 prohibits significant social media platforms with more than 50 million active members from blocking, removing or ‘demonetizing’ a user’s content based on their views. Florida’s S.B. 1072, also known as the Stop Social Media Censorship Act, restricts social media corporations from banning political candidates and ‘journalistic enterprises’.
The tech firms responded by taking these issues to federal court in Texas and Florida, claiming that the laws contravened their First Amendment rights to govern speech on their platforms. Meanwhile, the Supreme Court has temporarily halted the Texas law while its legal challenges continue in lower courts. Last year in September, the tech firms returned to the Supreme Court, following the verdict of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit favoring Texas, to request the justices’ assessment. Texas endorsed this request for review while also advocating for joint consideration of both the Texas and Florida laws.
The Supreme Court was approached by Florida in the fall, seeking advice after the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit prevented the state from enforcing most of its law. In the past January, the justices solicited the Biden administration’s position on whether to engage in these disputes.
The court will most probably schedule the hearing early next year. This is the second case involving social media currently undertaken by the court. During last April, the justices consented to assess whether public officials, operating as government representatives, can infringe First Amendment rights when they block users from their personal social media accounts. The hearing for this issue, chronicled under two case files- O’Connor-Ratliff v. Garnier and Lindke v. Freed – is set for October 31.
The original article is available at SCOTUSblog.