U.S. District Court Judge Beth Labson Freeman last month granted a request by the tech trade group NetChoice for a preliminary injunction against the measure on grounds that the law likely violates the First Amendment.
NetChoice, whose members include Meta and Google, sued to block the law in December after it passed last summer, arguing it would force companies to over-censor speech online and that tech platforms have the constitutional right to make “editorial decisions” about content they choose to keep or remove. “NetChoice will continue to defend the First Amendment and online privacy rights of Californians, their families and their businesses,” said Chris Marchese, the group’s director of litigation in a post on the platform X, formerly known as Twitter.