The case of NetChoice v. Paxton posed an early Supreme Court test of whether conservative states may regulate what appears on social media platforms. The answer so far is no.
Lawyers for the tech lobbying group NetChoice called the court’s intervention “welcome news.” Chris Marchese, counsel for the group, called the Texas law “a constitutional trainwreck. … We are relieved that the First Amendment, open internet and the users who rely on it remain protected from Texas’s unconstitutional overreach.”
NetChoice and the Computer and Communications Industry Association urged the high court to intervene. They said the Texas law, if upheld, would deny social media platforms the right to remove offensive posts and instead make them “havens for the vilest expression imaginable.” They said platforms would be forced “to disseminate all sorts of objectionable viewpoints — such as Russia’s propaganda claiming that its invasion of Ukraine is justified, ISIS propaganda claiming that extremism is warranted, neo-Nazi or KKK screeds denying or supporting the Holocaust, and encouraging children to engage in risky or unhealthy behavior like eating disorders.