Bill to stop “de platforming” declared unconstitutional
A recent Florida Bill signed into law (SB 7072) was declared by Governor Ron DeSantis to prevent “big tech” from silencing conservatives. The bill’s sponsor (and the lawmakers that voted to pass it) felt that the large social media giants, such as Twitter and Facebook were editing out certain political viewpoints, which violated the First Amendment. The premise was that these social media giants had become so big that they were tantamount to a public utility.
Industry associations sued the State of Florida to challenge that law and last week they won (again) in the 11th Circuit.
This case was an interesting one for us to follow, since some of the social media giants have excluded registrants from their platform. If the Court would have found that social media platforms were the modern day public square and cannot ban undesirable individuals from participating in the discourse that took place thereon, it could have been a significant win for those on the registry.
Unfortunately, it wasn’t. As Justice Newsome pointed out, “[social media] platforms are private enterprises, not governmental (or even quasi-governmental) entities. No one has an obligation to contribute to or consume the content that the platforms make available. And correlatively, while the Constitution protects citizens from governmental efforts to restrict their access to social media, see Packingham v. North Carolina, 137 S. Ct. 1730, 1737 (2017), no one has a vested right to force a platform to allow her to contribute to or consume social-media content.
Sadly, that statement spells out clearly why registrants are (and can) be banned from social media platforms.
This may be adverse to the interests of registrants in the short term but it was right legally. The same law that protects Facebook from having to deal with people it doesn’t want protects NARSOL connections, for example, from having to deal with people it doesn’t want. And why would we assume that if the judiciary found that political speech trumps Facebook’s property rights, that they would suddenly realize that registrants deserve the same consideration? It’s a stretch to suppose they would suddenly become consistent…
Besides, plenty of registrants just say phooey and use the platforms anyway.
This should be appealed. These companies are no longer private entities. Mark Zuckerberg and the other Big Tech magnates admitted they received tax-payer dollars and worked hand-in-hand with government. Just like FPL is a utility, so is Big Tech.
Twitter already permits registrants and their advocacy organizations. And they ban use of their platform for child sexual exploitation. Twitter understands the difference. You really wanted a court ruling to upend that? Be careful what you wish for, and be thankful for having avoided the unintended consequences that would have resulted, had the 11th Circuit gone the other way.
Looks like the Supreme Court issued an injunction regarding the similar Texas law.