Supreme Court weighs the future of First Amendment and social media
Updated 11 min ago
Supreme Court justices are weighing how the First Amendment applies to social media companies, as they consider a pair of cases that could transform how the internet has operated for decades — with sweeping consequences for a host of federal and state efforts to regulate the internet.
The court is reviewing laws passed in Florida and Texas that are intended to address allegations that social media companies censor conservative viewpoints by imposing strict limits on whether firms can block or take down content on their platforms.
Tech companies argue that the First Amendment protects their right to decide what posts and accounts they carry on their websites, while the states allege that the companies have grown so powerful that it is imperative to ensure that they do not discriminate against users or viewpoints they disagree with.
In a sign of the novel questions presented, Justice Samuel Alito pressed NetChoice — a group representing the tech industry — to define the term “content moderation,” asking whether the term was “anything more than a euphemism for censorship.”
“If the government’s doing it, then content moderation might be a euphemism for censorship,” said Paul Clement, an attorney representing NetChoice. “If a private party is doing it, content moderation is a euphemism for editorial discretion.”
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Invoking Etsy, Uber and Gmail, justices grappled with the ways the Florida law would apply to a host of popular tech services. Some justices — including Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson — expressed concern about the overly broad nature of the law. Other justices, including Alito, questioned the broad protections the companies were seeking, asking whether Gmail has a First Amendment right to delete Tucker Carlson or Rachel Maddow’s accounts if they disagree with their viewpoints. Clement, the lawyer representing the tech industry, argued that they “might be able to do that.”
The Supreme Court is likely to decide the cases by June, in the critical months ahead of the presidential election. In a sign of the case’s political stakes, former president Donald Trump submitted a brief defending the Florida law.
First Amendment experts warn that either argument could lead to outcomes that would be deleterious for democracy. If the court rules in favor of the tech companies, the industry could argue that the First Amendment precludes a broad array of proposed regulation. If the states win, governments across the country may push ahead with rules that give states unprecedented influence over political discourse online.
This is just one of several high-profile tech cases on the Supreme Court’s docket, as the court increasingly weighs how centuries of free speech precedent applies to the digital sphere. Next month, the high court will hear arguments in a case that weighs whether the First Amendment precludes government officials from pressuring tech companies to remove content.
washingtonpost.com
- Jeff |
