In a word, no. A court ruling is one thing. It will be appealed all the way to the Supreme Court, anyway. Meanwhile, it would have to be enforced. Who would enforce it? Biden’s handlers’ authoritarian Justice Department? Forget it.
“Federal Court rules Big Tech has no ‘freewheeling First Amendment right to censor,'” by Brianna Herlihy, Fox News, September 19, 2022:
A federal appeals court upheld a Texas law on Friday that seeks to curb censorship by social media platforms. The ruling, a major victory for Republicans who charge companies like Twitter and Facebook are limiting free speech, is a step in a major legal battle that could end up at the Supreme Court.
The lawsuit is challenging HB 20, a Texas bill signed into law by Gov. Greg Abbott that regulates social media platforms with more than 50 million monthly users, which includes Google, Facebook and Twitter, and says they cannot censor or limit users’ speech based on viewpoint expression.
In his opinion, Federal Judge Andrew S. Oldham of the Fifth Circuit said the platforms argued for “a rather odd inversion of the First Amendment” that “buried somewhere in the person’s enumerated right to free speech lies a corporation’s unenumerated right to muzzle speech.”
“Today we reject the idea that corporations have a freewheeling First Amendment right to censor what people say,” Judge Oldham continued….
Infidel says
Will this law vary state to state? If so, then just like social media platforms have to do special things in countries where censorship of certain things are required, similarly they’d have to have a physical presence in each state to comply w/ the rules in that state. This assumes that the First Amendment is applicable in some states, but not others
gravenimage says
Will court ruling that Big Tech has no ‘right to censor’ restore the freedom of speech?
…………………………………….
I doubt it.
The most concerning censorship is state censorship, and even in the West this is rife.
James Lincoln says
In case you haven’t seen it, Mark Zuckerberg’s net worth has decreased by 56% since the beginning of 2022.
He has lost at least $71 billion.
And Meta may not yet have hit bottom…