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The Supreme Court announced on Friday that it will address the constitutionality of Texas and Florida’s laws prohibiting social media companies from banning users due to potentially harmful rhetoric.
Both states have passed legislation aimed at preventing tech giants such as Meta (formerly known as Facebook), X (formerly known as Twitter), and Google’s YouTube from suppressing conservative viewpoints, a move supported by many Republican lawmakers.
Texas and Florida argue that these laws ensure equal access for all users on social media platforms. However, the tech companies, represented by associations like NetChoice and the Computer and Communications Industry Association, claim that these laws infringe on their freedom of speech. It is worth noting that historically, tech companies have had control over the content published on their platforms, and users are typically required to agree to terms of service.
Lower courts have been divided on how to handle these laws, but the Supreme Court will now make a final decision. The ruling is expected next year, during the Court’s upcoming nine-month term starting next week.
Texas and Florida enacted these laws in 2021 following former President Donald Trump’s ban from Twitter due to his inflammatory posts about the 2020 presidential election and the subsequent Capitol riot on January 6, 2021. Trump, now a leading Republican candidate for the 2024 presidential race, and his lawyers filed a brief urging the Supreme Court to hear and uphold the Florida law.
It is noteworthy that both Texas and Florida passed their laws before Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, acquired Twitter for approximately $44 billion in October. Musk later allowed Trump to return to Twitter in November.
The Biden administration has also requested the Supreme Court to consider whether these laws in Texas and Florida violate the tech companies’ First Amendment rights. In their filing, the administration argues that the Constitution protects the tech companies’ content moderation activities.
“The platforms’ content-moderation activities are protected by the First Amendment, and the content-moderation and individualized-explanation requirements impermissibly burden those protected activities,” the filing states.
WATCH: Social media’s First Amendment problem
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