NetChoice, CCIA Reply Briefs Urge Defeat of Fla., Texas Social Media Laws

NetChoice and the Computer & Communications Industry Association used separate reply briefs Thursday at the U.S. Supreme Court to press for the defeat of the Florida and Texas social media laws on First Amendment grounds. The Florida statute (SB-7072) “is a compendium of First Amendment problems,” said their Florida brief (docket 22-277). It requires a select handful of private actors “to disseminate third-party speech against their will and restricts their ability to decide how to organize and present that speech,” it said. “It draws distinctions based on content, speaker, and viewpoint,” it said. It does all this “because Florida dislikes how websites like Facebook and YouTube have exercised their editorial discretion and wants to amplify speakers and messages the state prefers,” it said. Florida “remarkably” insists that SB-7072 doesn’t regulate speech at all, it said: “That claim blinks reality and belies Florida’s own explanations for the law, which are replete with professed concerns about the messages that it perceived certain websites to convey through their editorial choices.” In their brief (docket 22-555) in opposition to the Texas law (HB-20), NetChoice and CCIA argued that Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) has advanced a “revolutionary interpretation” of the First Amendment that would require SCOTUS “to overturn multiple lines of cases.” Under the Texas AG’s theory, governments “would have virtually unchecked authority to control and burden the editorial choices of private parties who publish and disseminate speech,” said the brief. But the Texas AG’s brief is “replete with arguments” that SCOTUS “has repeatedly rejected,” it said. The AG “comes nowhere close to carrying his heavy burden” of demonstrating that HB-20 satisfies strict, or even intermediate, First Amendment scrutiny, it said. To the contrary, his arguments flout the SCOTUS cases and “ignore the evidentiary record,” it said.