The Supreme Court on Friday agreed to decide whether state laws regulating content moderation practices of social-media platforms violate the First Amendment, the latest of several cases the justices have taken to define the Constitution’s reach into the digital world.
Texas and Florida both passed laws to combat what they said were content policies that disproportionately muffled conservative voices through practices sometimes called shadow-banning or deplatforming. Last year, federal appeals courts divided on whether the restrictions are constitutional. The Supreme Court blocked enforcement of the laws while it weighed whether to hear the issues.
The cases were the most prominent of a group of suits the justices added to the docket for their new term, which begins Monday. The court also took cases involving property rights, arbitration clauses and copyright protection.
The court has yet to act on another high-profile social-media case, in which lower courts blocked federal officials from pressuring social-media companies to suppress misleading content about Covid and other subjects. But the present docket already is heavy with cases involving social media, including whether officials can block individuals from following their accounts on platforms such as X, formerly known as Twitter.
The Texas law prohibited social-media platforms with at least 50 million monthly active users to censor users based on their viewpoints, thus applying to the most popular sites including Facebook, Instagram and TikTok, as well as X. The Fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, in New Orleans, upheld the measure.
Similar Florida legislation signed by Gov. Ron DeSantis, now a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, was largely found unlawful by the Atlanta-based 11th Circuit. Both laws were challenged by industry groups representing major social-media companies; they appealed the Texas decision, while Florida’s attorney general appealed its 11th Circuit loss.
As is typical in cases involving federal interests, the Supreme Court asked the Justice Department for its views. Biden administration Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar urged the court to hear the cases, and the justices agreed.