US Supreme Court sidesteps ruling on Republican-backed social media laws
Al Jazeera
Top court declines to rule on Texas and Florida laws, but defends social media platforms’ right to moderate content.
The United States’s top court has declined to rule on whether Republican-backed laws limiting social media platforms’ ability to moderate content violate freedom of speech, kicking the issue back to lower courts.
The US Supreme Court on Monday ordered the Courts of Appeals for the 5th and 11th Circuits to review the laws in Texas and Florida again, arguing the courts had not properly addressed the statutes’ compatibility with the First Amendment of the US Constitution.
While the top court did not rule on the constitutionality of the laws, the unanimous decision defended the right of platforms such as Facebook, TikTok, and YouTube to curate the content on their platforms.
Writing for the court, Justice Elena Kagan said that social media companies should enjoy comparable editorial discretion as newspapers and that the First Amendment “does not go on leave when social media are involved”.
“The principle does not change because the curated compilation has gone from the physical to the virtual world,” Kagan wrote in an opinion signed by five of the nine justices.
