By Will Oremus, Cat Zakrzewski, and Justin Jouvenal, washingtonpost.com, 7-1-24
The Supreme Court on July 1 ordered lower courts to take a second look at a pair of laws in Texas and Florida that would have prevented social media companies from removing certain political posts or accounts, saying the courts had not fully addressed the First Amendment issues involved.
The justices voided the judgments of separate appeals courts that had reached opposite conclusions about whether the laws were constitutional, ordering both to perform a much broader analysis of whether the statutes violate the right to free speech….
The High Court dealt a blow to conservative critics of social media companies by signaling that key parts of the Texas law in particular are unlikely to withstand constitutional scrutiny.
Justice Elena Kagan wrote that social media sites such as Facebook and YouTube have First Amendment rights to curate and moderate the posts in users’ feeds. » Read More