SCOTUS Suspends Texas Social Media Law

The Supreme Court issued a 5-4 ruling across ideological lines on Tuesday, temporarily blocking Texas from enforcing a controversial social media censorship law and sending the case back to be heard at a lower court.

📱 A deeper dive... Texas passed a law last September prohibiting social media companies with at least 50 million monthly active users from banning, demonetizing, or downranking posts based on "viewpoint."

• Texas residents, or anyone doing business in the state, would be able to sue platforms for alleged violations and seek court orders against content removal.
• Tech industry groups immediately challenged the law in federal court, winning an injunction to suspend it from going into effect. 
• But earlier this month, an appeals court ruled the law could go into effect – until yesterday’s SCOTUS ruling suspended it once again.

⚖️ The Court’s decision: Justices Roberts, Kavanaugh, Coney Barrett, Sotomayor and Breyer voted to block the law. As is customary for an emergency order, the majority didn’t explain its reasoning.

• Justice Alito filed a dissent joined by fellow conservative Justices Thomas and Gorsuch, saying he’s “not comfortable intervening at this point in the proceedings.” Justice Kagan also dissented, but she didn’t join the Alito opinion or file her own.

🇺🇸 Zoom out: A similar law in Florida was blocked last week by a federal appeals court, which sided with tech industry groups saying the measure violated their First Amendment rights.