Tech teams ask Supreme Courtroom to weigh in on Texas social media regulation

Two tech business teams requested the U.S. Supreme Courtroom on Thursday to weigh in on a Texas regulation that will restrict main social media corporations’ means to reasonable content material on their platforms.

The Laptop and Communications Affiliation (CCIA) and NetChoice petitioned the Supreme Courtroom to overview the case over Texas Home Invoice 20, which seeks to ban social media platforms from “censoring” customers based mostly on their political beliefs.

The regulation was set to enter impact in December 2021 however has remained tied up in courtroom for the final yr over allegations that it violates the First Modification — arguments that CCIA and NetChoice reiterated in Thursday’s petition to the excessive courtroom.

“HB20 infringes the core First Modification rights of Petitioners’ members by denying them editorial management over their very own web sites, whereas forcing them to publish speech they don’t want to disseminate,” CCIA and NetChoice mentioned within the temporary. 

A district courtroom choose initially blocked the Texas regulation from going into impact however was later overturned by the Fifth Circuit Courtroom of Appeals.

The tech business teams — whose members embody main tech corporations like Meta, Twitter and Google — additionally requested the Supreme Courtroom to weigh in on an analogous regulation in Florida in October, which was blocked by the eleventh Circuit Courtroom of Appeals.

“This case, involving a key Constitutional problem and break up appellate courtroom choices, requires Supreme Courtroom oversight,” CCIA President Matt Schruers mentioned in a press release.

The Texas and Florida legal guidelines have emerged from the states’ Republican-led legislatures in response to rising accusations that social media platforms censor content material based mostly on anti-conservative biases.