With Thursday’s action, the Supreme Court has now received petitions from two conflicting split circuit rulings related to state laws that seek to force platforms to carry certain speech.
Both Florida’s attorney general and the tech groups petitioned SCOTUS to take up an 11th Circuit Court of Appeals ruling that largely struck down a similar Florida law prohibiting tech companies from de-platforming politicians and candidates, saying it violated the First Amendment.
Both the Texas and Florida laws are currently blocked by the circuit courts from going into effect.
The Texas attorney general did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The tech groups say if both laws were in effect, social media platforms would have to carry content that violates their own rules around hate speech and extremist content.
“We’re confident the U.S. Supreme Court will uphold the First Amendment by concluding that the government may not force private businesses to disseminate vile content or overrule their private editorial decisions,” NetChoice counsel Chris Marchese said in a statement.
The Supreme Court has already ruled on the 5th Circuit’s decision to uphold Texas’ law. In a 5-4 ruling in May, the highest court blocked the Texas law from going into effect in response to an emergency request by NetChoice and CCIA, based off an earlier 5th Circuit decision in the spring. The high court, however, didn’t rule on the underlying merit of the 5th Circuit ruling — and potentially could if it grants this latest petition.
The 5th Circuit’s 2-1 ruling in September favored claims made by conservatives that their voices are being censored by tech platforms, an allegation the platforms dispute.
It’s not just Texas and Florida that are pushing legislation to rein in tech platforms’ content moderation policies. More than 34 states advanced legislation last year, with Republican legislatures largely pushing bills requiring more speech to remain online and Democratic legislatures like California and New York advancing bills directing platforms to remove certain extremist content.
The Supreme Court has already agreed to hear two other tech-related cases this term — Gonzalez v. Google and Twitter v. Taamneh — which could impact the future of how the platforms operate under their liability shield known as Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. That law protects websites from being sued over most third-party content posted by users, and also allows the websites to edit and moderate such content.
