State’s social media law is blocked
A federal judge late Wednesday temporarily blocked Texas’ law regulating how social media companies can moderate content, hours before it was set to take effect.
Siding with a pair of tech trade groups who had sued over the law, U.S. District Judge Robert Pitman barred Attorney General Ken Paxton’s office from enforcing the measure, which prohibits large social media companies from banning or suspending users based on their viewpoint. Republican lawmakers who pushed for it have argued it would counter perceived efforts by Facebook, Twitter and other platforms to censor or silence conservatives — including former president Donald Trump.
In a 30-page opinion, Pitman wrote that the law, known as House Bill 20, violates social media platforms’ constitutional right to “engage in expression when they disagree with or object to content” and “chills” their free speech rights by allowing users to sue companies if they believe their view has been improperly censored.
“Social media platforms have a First Amendment right to moderate content disseminated on their platforms,” Pitman wrote, citing prior Supreme Court rulings that he said affirmed “private companies that use editorial judgment to choose whether to publish content … cannot be compelled by the government to publish other content.”
Paxton’s office is expected to appeal Pitman’s ruling to the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Louisiana, which is considered one of the most conservative courts in the country. In October, the court reinstated Texas’ anti-abortion law shortly after Pitman had temporarily blocked it.
At the very least, Pitman’s decision will delay enforcement of the social media law, which was set to take effect Thursday. Gov. Greg Abbott signed HB 20 into law in September, shortly after
legislators had sent the bill to his desk.
Texas’ social media law is the second such measure to be struck down in court, after a federal judge earlier this year blocked a similar law in Florida, calling it “riddled with imprecision and ambiguity.”
Pitman similarly wrote that parts of HB 20 are “prohibitively vague,” including its definition for “censor” and a provision that empowers Paxton’s office to seek an injunction against “potential violations” of the law.
“It strikes the court as nearly impossible for a social media platform—that has at least 50 million users — to determine whether any single piece of content has ‘equal access or visibility’ versus another piece of content given the huge numbers of users and content,” Pitman wrote.
Pitman also rejected the state’s argument that large social media sites carry major influence over the public flow of information and should therefore be classified as so-called common carriers — entities such as telecommunications and utility providers that cannot discriminate against customers.
The industry groups — NetChoice and the Computer and Communications Industry Association — had argued that there are many ways for information to be distributed online aside from social media platforms, precluding the companies from being considered common carriers.
Steve DelBianco, the president and chief executive of NetChoice, said HB 20 “would unleash a tidal wave of offensive content and hate speech crashing onto users, creators, and advertisers.”
“America’s judicial system protected our constitutional right to free speech today by ensuring the politically motivated Texas law does not see the light of day and force Americans everywhere to endure racial epithets, aggressive homophobia, pornographic material, beheadings, or other gruesome content just to scroll online,” DelBianco said in a statement.