The Supreme Court on Monday will consider whether state laws that seek to regulate social media platforms violate the First Amendment.
The justices will hear oral arguments in two cases challenging laws enacted by Republican-dominated legislatures and signed by GOP governors in Florida and Texas. The details of the laws vary, but both aim to restrict social media companies from censoring users based on their views.
Florida and Texas passed the laws in 2021 to stop what Republican leaders viewed as censorship of conservative views. It came after several platforms suspended former President Donald Trump's accounts in the wake of the attack on the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021.
Tech trade groups NetChoice and Computer & Communications Industry Association sued the states. They said the laws are unconstitutional because the First Amendment protects against government infringement of speech. They added that the laws would prevent platforms from removing extremism and hate speech.
The groups have urged the high court to strike down both laws in their entirety. Lower courts have split on the issue, blocking provisions of Florida's law while upholding the Texas law.
"States are trying to control what Americans see, read, hear, and say online," Chris Marchese, the litigation director for NetChoice, said in a statement in August.
"The Supreme Court should strike down Florida's and Texas's laws in full and reaffirm that the First Amendment serves as a bulwark of digital liberty—and against government control of online speech," Marchese added. He said the court's decision "will shape online speech and the internet for decades to come."
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said states have "always had the right to protect their citizens from corporations that would stifle liberty and infringe upon their ability to freely communicate with others."
"I look forward to defending our law which was adopted in response to a troubling trend of powerful companies unjustly silencing Americans they do not agree with," Paxton said in a statement on Sunday.
"Just like the postal service and telephone companies, social-media platforms function as common carriers of ordinary citizens' communications."
The cases represent the first time that the Supreme Court properly weighs in on how free speech laws apply to social-media platforms.
"The stakes for free speech online are potentially enormous," said Scott Wilkens, senior counsel at the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, told The Texas Tribune.
"The court here is being presented with diametrically opposed interpretations of the law, and what the court does could, on the one hand, allow the government free rein to regulate social-media platforms, or, on the other, prohibit the government from regulating them at all," Wilkens added.
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