Supreme Court Sends Social Media Cases Back to Lower Courts

Earlier this summer, the U.S. Supreme Court ordered lower courts to reexamine laws from Florida and Texas that restrict how social media companies can moderate content posted to their platforms, keeping those laws on hold in the meantime. The Supreme Court said the lower courts had not properly analyzed First Amendment challenges to the laws.

 The Florida case concerns a Republican-backed law enacted in 2021, which aims to combat censorship by prohibiting social media companies from engaging in certain types of content moderation. The law also requires social media companies to notify a user if that person’s post is removed or altered and to make general disclosures about their operations and policies.

Two trade associations, whose members include Google, Meta and X, challenged the law in federal court, arguing that it violated the First Amendment. 

The Texas case concerns a similar 2021 law that imposes rules for content moderation. Like the Florida law, it requires social media platforms to notify users when posts are removed and to provide an explanation. The Texas law also requires social media platforms to disclose how they moderate their content and how their algorithms prioritize certain posts.

The laws came in response to what their GOP backers saw as discrimination by social media platforms against conservative viewpoints, after Facebook and Twitter, now known as X, banned former President Donald Trump from their sites following the Jan. 6, 2021 riot at the U.S. Capitol. 

Social media companies argued that the laws infringe upon their First Amendment rights by denying them editorial control and forcing them to publish speech they don’t wish to disseminate. According to published reports, the Supreme Court’s July ruling signals that social media companies have a First Amendment right to moderate content on their own platforms. — Greg Beaubien