The huge social media platforms don’t have the “freewheeling right to censor” that they thought they had. At least, not in Texas. A federal appeals court ruling on Friday is considered a “major victory” for Republicans and free speech but it will almost certainly head up to the Supreme Court before it’s made final.
No right to censor
Citizens have the right to say anything they want but social media platforms don’t have a corresponding right to censor the things THEY want.
On Friday, September 16, a federal appeals court with Texas jurisdiction upheld their state law which “seeks to curb censorship by social media platforms.” Companies including Twitter and Facebook routinely limit free speech using the excuse of preventing misinformation.
Texas passed HB 20 and Greg Abbott signed it into law. The regulation applies to “social media platforms with more than 50 million monthly users, which includes Google, Facebook and Twitter.”
?
Major legal victory for the American people against Big Tech platforms that stifle our free speech rights online.
Judge Andy Oldham upholds Texas law forbidding viewpoint discrimination by social-media platforms with at least 50 million users–YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter. pic.twitter.com/E7wfvY5xLu
— ?? Mike Davis ?? (@mrddmia) September 16, 2022
The law says they can’t censor the speech of users “based on viewpoint expression.” Everyone has the right to their opinion and Federal Judge Andrew S. Oldham of the Fifth Circuit put his in writing.
The twisted legal logic used by the platforms to silence conservatives, Oldham explains, “argued for a rather odd inversion of the First Amendment” that “buried somewhere in the person’s enumerated right to free speech lies a corporation’s unenumerated right to muzzle speech.” He wasn’t buying it for a minute.
“Today we reject the idea that corporations have a freewheeling First Amendment right to censor what people say.”
Giants keep fighting
The victory in Texas will have wide ranging effects across the country. Before the big platforms cave in and allow people to start asking about Hunter Biden’s laptop or questioning why we still have vaccine mandates and a state of emergency when the pandemic is over. Maybe even questioning if the vaccine really works in the first place. For now, Texans are celebrating.
Their attorney general Ken Paxton tweeted out “I just secured a MASSIVE VICTORY for the Constitution & Free Speech in fed court: #BigTech CANNOT censor the political voices of ANY Texan!” For now, he didn’t add.
A nonprofit group who is buying the lawyers for Meta, the parent company of Facebook, NetChoice, was “disappointed” with the decision. They want to censor it. “We remain convinced that when the U.S. Supreme Court hears one of our cases, it will uphold the First Amendment rights of websites, platforms, and apps.”
There is a good chance that the question will get in front of the Supreme Court. That’s because Oldham’s verdict created what is known as a “circuit split,” since the eleventh circuit “struck down a similar social media law in Florida.” For practical purposes, “A circuit split generally increases the likelihood of the Supreme Court taking up a case.”
One of the reasons Elon Musk decided to buy Twitter is because he wanted to end the censor tactics used against fellow conservatives. He had the money to be able to do something about it.
He might not even have to buy the company to accomplish his goal. He’s in court with them now showing that they broke their end of the deal by failing to disclose that most of their users are really robots in disguise.
