Supreme Court vacates rulings on laws banning social media censorship of conservatives
The U.S. Supreme Court has declined to rule on state laws holding social media platforms accountable for censoring political or unpopular opinions from users.
In a unanimous decision released Monday morning, the high court vacated the rulings in the cases of NetChoice v. Moody and NetChoice v. Paxton, which centered on laws passed in Florida and Texas. Despite passing in 2021, the laws still have yet to go into effect while the litigation continues.
Justice Elena Kagan authored the court opinion, writing that the cases be remanded to the lower court level because "neither Court of Appeals properly considered the facial nature of NetChoice's challenge."
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Kagan said that during the cases' arguments, it was "revealed that the laws might apply to, and differently affect, other kinds of websites and apps."
"To make that judgment, a court must determine a law's full set of applications, evaluate which are constitutional and which are not, and compare the one to the other. Neither court performed that necessary inquiry," she wrote.
"In sum, there is much work to do below on both these cases, given the facial nature of NetChoice's challenges. But that work must be done consistent with the First Amendment, which does not go on leave when social media are involved."
Justice Amy Coney Barrett authored one of the concurring opinions, writing that she believed "these cases illustrate the dangers of bringing a facial challenge," arguing that an "as-applied challenge" would be better.
"A facial challenge to either of these laws likely forces a court to bite off more than it can chew. An as-applied challenge, by contrast, would enable courts to home in on whether and how specific functions — like feeds versus direct messaging — are inherently expressive and answer platform- and function-specific questions that might bear on the First Amendment analysis," wrote Barrett.
"While the governing constitutional principles are straightforward, applying them in one fell swoop to the entire social-media universe is not."
Last September, the Supreme Court announced it would hear oral arguments in the two Netchoice cases, which centered on legal challenges to Florida's Senate Bill 7072 and Texas' House Bill 20.
Also called the "Stop Social Media Censorship Act," SB 7072 was signed into law by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis in May 2021 and allows social media users to sue platforms they believe wrongfully censored them.
A district court issued an injunction that blocked the law, and then a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit upheld much of the block in a May 2022 ruling.
Signed into law by Texas Gov. Greg Abbot in September 2021, HB 20 bars social media platforms with over 50 million monthly users from censoring political content they view as disagreeable.
Although a district court found HB 20 unconstitutional, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit upheld the law in September 2022.
