Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals Upholds Texas' Anti-Social-Media-Censorship Law

Bizarrely, the tech monopolies claimed that their right to censorship was rooted... in the First Amendment.

This is a bit old -- it happened on Friday -- but too cromulent to not note.

A Texas law that bans social media companies from censoring users' viewpoints is constitutionally allowed, the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled on Friday, in a blow to Facebook, Twitter and Google.

The ruling is a win for Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton in their efforts to combat what they call censorship of conservative viewpoints by social media companies.

Despite the ruling, the Texas law does not immediately take effect; it will do so once the appeals court issues written instructions to the district court that had decided the case.

...

"Today we reject the idea that corporations have a freewheeling First Amendment right to censor what people say," Andrew Oldham, a Donald Trump appointee who had previously served as Abbott's general counsel, wrote in the 5th Circuit's decision.

...

Netchoice and the CCIA have argued that the First Amendment protects social media platforms' ability to curate content, much like a newspaper does.

So they're claiming they're publishers -- for some purposes.

And platforms for all the others, where they want to secure the immunity to lawsuit provided by s.230.

Oldham dismissed this argument, writing in the decision, "We reject the Platforms' attempt to extract a freewheeling censorship right from the Constitution's free speech guarantee. The Platforms are not newspapers. Their censorship is not speech."

Edith Jones, a Ronald Reagan appointee who concurred in the largely 2-1 decision, was even more scathing, calling NetChoice's argument "ludicrous."

The law provides a right of lawsuit against the companies for censorship, deplatforming, banning, etc., based on "viewpoint," as opposed to objective non-viewpoint-based criteria. Such as threats, libel, doxxing, porn, and so on.

And racism, I'd guess. And "hate" as well. The problem with the social media monopolies' enforcement of their "hate" codes is... they permit certain users to use an awful lot of hate speech against races, religions, and sexualities that the dominant political clique has deemed it acceptable to hate.

So either hate is permitted or it isn't permitted -- it can't be permitted for some and not for others, depending on viewpoint.

Attorney General Ken Paxton @KenPaxtonTX

BREAKING: I just secured a MASSIVE VICTORY for the Constitution & Free Speech in fed court: #BigTech CANNOT censor the political voices of ANY Texan! The 5th Circuit "reject[s] the idea that corporations have a freewheeling First Amendment right to censor what people say."

This case will certainly be heard again by the Supreme Court. The 11th Circuit struck down a "similar" law in Florida, finding that corporate censorship is free speech, I guess. The Supreme Court generally does not tolerate a "split in authority" among circuits for long, and is almost obligated to hear the case and render a judgment and give a single unified rule applicable throughout the country.

Full opinion here. Thanks to Octochicken for that. What a screenname.

Section 230 provides immunity for moderation if it's done in "good faith." Everyone seems to read those two key words out of the section as if they're meaningless. They just pretend they're not there.

But they are there. And if words appear in a statute, they are supposed to be read as if they were put there deliberately, and have meaning.

But obviously you are not moderating for libel, porn, etc. "in good faith" if you're censoring people based on political opinion and viewpoint. That's not good faith.

posted by Ace at 05:15 PM

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