Moody v. Netchoice

144 S.Ct. 2383 (2024)

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Nature of the Case

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Facts

In 2021, Florida and Texas (Ds) enacted statutes regulating large social-media companies and other internet platforms. Both states curtail the platforms’ capacity to engage in content moderation-to filter, prioritize, and label the varied third-party messages, videos, and other content their users wish to post. Both laws also include individualized-explanation provisions, requiring a platform to give reasons to a user if it removes or alters her posts. If a platform moderates content, the platform needs to provide an individualized explanation of its reasoning. NetChoice (Ps) brought facial First Amendment challenges against the two laws claiming both laws were unconstitutional. The Eleventh Circuit upheld the injunction of Florida’s law, as to all provisions relevant here. The court held that the State’s restrictions on content moderation trigger First Amendment scrutiny under cases protecting “editorial discretion. The court then concluded that the content-moderation provisions are unlikely to survive heightened scrutiny…the court held that the obligation to explain “millions of [decisions] per day” is “unduly burdensome and likely to chill platforms’ protected speech. The Fifth Circuit reversed the preliminary injunction. It held that the platforms’ content-moderation activities are “not speech” at all, and so do not implicate the First Amendment. The court determined the State could regulate them to advance its interest in “protecting a diversity of ideas.” The court determined that the statute’s individualized-explanation provisions would likely survive, even assuming the platforms were engaged in speech. It found no undue burden under Zauderer because the platforms needed only to “scale up” a “complaint-and-appeal process” they already used. The Supreme Court consolidated the cases and granted certiorari. The cases are on review of preliminary injunctions. The Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit upheld such an injunction, finding that the Florida law was not likely to survive First Amendment review. The Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit reversed a similar injunction, primarily reasoning that the Texas law does not regulate any speech and so does not implicate the First Amendment.