What the Supreme Court rulings mean for Republicans’ fight against “bias” on social media
Supreme Court will not restrict government’s social media contacts
The U.S. Supreme Court said it would not impose restrictions on President Joe Biden’s administration’s communications with social media platforms.
For years, Republicans have spread the message that powerful technology companies are biased against conservatives.
That resentment intensified in 2021 when major social media platforms suspended former President Donald Trump following the attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6. Florida and Texas responded by passing laws to limit how technology companies could moderate content on their platforms.
“There is a dangerous movement by some social media companies to silence conservative ideas and values,” said Texas Republican Governor Greg Abbott when he signed his state’s law in 2021. “This is wrong and we will not allow it in Texas.”
While the anti-technology sentiment didn’t generate as much partisan fervor as the abortion or immigration policies, it mobilized a Republican base loyal to the former president. Then the popular conservative campaign ran into a major obstacle: the nation’s Supreme Court.
On Monday, the Supreme Court sent challenges to the Florida and Texas laws back to lower courts, saying the laws require further analysis to determine whether they are constitutional. Although parts of the laws could be upheld, Justice Elena Kagan, writing for the majority, suggested key elements would likely not stand up to scrutiny, dealing a blow to conservatives.
“In summary, there is still much work to be done in both cases,” Justice Kagan said, adding, “That work must be done in accordance with the First Amendment to the Constitution, which is not overridden when social media is involved.”
Political commentator Dan Schnur said the decision would anger conservatives who believe their views are being suppressed by “rich technology executives.”
“Since the courts aren’t going to bail them out anytime soon, this will be an issue for Republican congressional candidates in the fall. But nothing will happen in Congress either, so the anger on the right will continue to grow,” said Schnur, who teaches at the Institute of Governmental Studies at the University of California – Berkeley and the Annenberg School of Communications at the University of Southern California.
Supreme Court rulings on social media anger Republicans
The high hopes of conservatives when the censorship debate came onto the Supreme Court’s agenda seem to be fading.
“Even with ‘conservative’ judges like Amy Coney Barrett, we can’t expect the courts to help,” Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida, a Trump ally, tweeted last week after the Supreme Court rejected a lawsuit filed by the Republican attorneys general of Louisiana and Missouri and a small number of social media users who had accused the Biden administration of going too far in pressuring social media platforms to suppress content about Covid-19 and election fraud.
Legal experts said Monday’s ruling could also have implications for how state parliaments seek to regulate free speech and online platforms in the future.
“Although today’s decision does not definitively settle the future of Florida and Texas laws, a majority bloc of justices – led by Justice Kagan – has articulated some important principles that represent a major victory for First Amendment social media freedoms,” said Eric Goldman, a professor at Santa Clara University School of Law.
Florida and Texas remained true to their ideological views.
“Censorship by big tech companies is one of the greatest threats to free public discourse and election integrity,” Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said in a statement on X. “I will continue to fight for our law that protects Texans’ voices.”
Trump and Republican campaign against social media loses momentum
In recent years, allegations that social media platforms violate the First Amendment rights of conservatives have skyrocketed, becoming a central flashpoint in the country’s culture war.
Republicans say social media companies have been too quick to suppress conservative views and do not disclose enough about how they decide what content to remove. Social media companies say they do not target conservatives, only hurtful speech that violates their rules.
Republican activists are still pushing that point in states across the country. States have introduced similar legislation to counter censorship allegations, but no new laws have been signed, said Khara Boender, state director of the Computer & Communications Industry Association.
“Today’s Supreme Court decision underscores how closely such laws are scrutinized for First Amendment protections,” Boender told USA TODAY.
Laws to “censor” social media in Florida and Texas remain blocked
If Florida and Texas had prevailed in the Supreme Court, the laws would have led to sweeping changes in the content Americans see in their social media feeds during a hotly contested presidential election.
The Florida state law would require major social media platforms to host “some speech they would otherwise prefer not to host” by prohibiting the censorship or blocking of a political candidate or “journalistic enterprise.”
The Texas law would prohibit social media companies with at least 50 million monthly active users from censoring users based on their “opinion” and would allow either the users or the Texas Attorney General to sue.
The laws were challenged by technology industry trade groups NetChoice and the Computer & Communications Industry Association, whose members include Facebook parent company Meta, Google’s YouTube and TikTok, and were blocked before they could take effect. One federal appeals court overturned the Florida law, while another upheld the Texas law.
Without the ability to downgrade or block content, social media companies warned The Users would be inundated with hate speech, spam, disinformation and other toxic content.
“Ordinary people don’t want to go to websites where they just see a lot of legal but terrible content,” Chris Marchese, who leads litigation at technology trade group NetChoice, previously told USA TODAY.
Both laws remain blocked.
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