Supreme Court Blocks Texas From Enforcing Social Media ‘Censorship’ Law

The Supreme Court on Tuesday temporarily blocked a Texas law that restricts the ability of social media platforms to moderate users' content.

Tech trade groups NetChoice and the Computer and Communications Industry Association (CCIA) asked the court to overturn a decision by a lower court to stay an injunction against the law.

The Fifth Circuit overturned a ruling that would have prevented Texas from implementing the law.

NetChoice and CCIA claimed in a filing that the law would require platforms to broadcast propaganda by the likes of the KKK and the Kremlin, drive away advertisers and require the junking of content moderation systems that cost billions of dollars to develop.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and other officials argued in a filing that social media platforms apply heavy-handed and arbitrary censorship.

In a dissent, Justice Samuel Alito argued that the Supreme Court's intervention was premature and that pre- internet rulings should be applied to social media platforms.

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If the appeals court rules in favor of Texas, the law could go back into effect.

Tangent

The Texas law doesn't require social media platforms to allow all speech. Platforms would still be able to remove content that directly encourages criminal activity or includes specific threats of violence against a person or group of people because of race, sex or other personal characteristics. At the request of groups working to prevent the sexual exploitation of children or the harassment of sexual abuse survivors, platforms would still be allowed to remove content.

Key Background

The Texas law was passed due to complaints that platforms were censoring conservatives. The market for right-leaning alternatives like Parler, Gab and Donald Trump's Truth Social was created because of the supposed liberal bias of these platforms. Mainstream platforms like Facebook and Twitter command 229 million and 1.93 billion active users, respectively, and none of these alternative platforms have grown to challenge them. A study by researchers from MIT found that the platform tends to promote content from right-wing sources over left-wing sources.

Tech Groups Representing Facebook and Twitter sued the state of Texas.