Today, NetChoice co-filed with CCIA its preliminary injunction following its complaint against AG Moody regarding Florida’s anti-bias bill, SB 7072. This preliminary injunction, if successful, will delay the law’s start date. The memorandum and Carl Szabo’s declaration are linked here.
“Until the court strikes this law down as unconstitutional, breaking the balance between free expression and online safety is simply not the answer. Users and advertisers don’t want to see awful but lawful content on their feeds and the constitution prohibits Florida’s government from compelling private actors to host this harmful and dangerous speech,” said Carl Szabo, Vice President and General Counsel at NetChoice.
“A preliminary injunction will ensure this law is not enforced and internet users don’t face an onslaught of content that offends them and destroys their online experience while this issue makes its way through the litigation process. A preliminary injunction will protect the First Amendment rights of private actors to moderate, curate, and host content in the best interests of their users and advertisers until a court has decided on the matter,” continued Szabo.
“Allowing SB 7072 to take effect, even for a small amount of time, would lead to significant public harm, threatening the financial position of these platforms as well as the safety of users, creators, and advertisers that simply want access to family-friendly and accessible sites.”
Examples of the awful but lawful content that social media sites could be forced to host if SB 7072 is allowed to be enforced:
- Racial epithets like these examples from Parler;
- Nazi antisemitism like these posts reported to proliferate on Gab
- Pornographic images and videos like these reported as prevalent on Parler;
- Aggressive homophobia and transphobia like these subreddits that were taken down;
- Harassment and revenge porn like exploitation taken down on Facebook;
- Medical misinformation and harmful at-home “remedies” like these pages on Facebook;
- Dangerous conspiracy theories like those social media worked to fight last summer; and
- Cyberbullying.