Supreme Court Ices Texas Social Media Moderation Ban
The Texas law that bans large social forums from interfering with posts based on their political viewpoint got a time-out from the Supreme Court Tuesday. In a 5-4 ruling, the justices granted an emergency request from two Washington tech industry groups, which argued that the statute’s sweeping provisions would cause intolerable turmoil.
The five members who agreed with the Computer and Communications Industry Association(Opens in a new window) and NetChoice(Opens in a new window)–Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr. and Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Stephen G. Breyer, Brett M. Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett–did not explain their decision, as is often the case in emergency rulings like this.
Justice Samuel A. Alito, Jr., joined by Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil M. Gorsuch, wrote a six-page dissent(Opens in a new window). Justice Elena Kagan would not have stopped the May 11 ruling(Opens in a new window) of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit that let the Texas law take effect, but she did not detail her reasoning.
H.B. 20(Opens in a new window) was signed into law(Opens in a new window) last September by Gov. Greg Abbott (R), and says online forums with more than 50 million monthly active users “may not censor a user, a user’s expression, or a user’s ability to receive the expression of another person based on: (1) the viewpoint of the user or another person; (2) the viewpoint represented in the user’s expression; or (3) a user’s geographic location in this state or any part of this state.”
Its definition of “censor” is broad enough to encompass not just removing posts or limiting their visibility, but labeling them or cutting them off from ad revenues. It also grants almost no exceptions to the
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