Tag: Texas

Upcoming Supreme Court Cases May Help Restore Free Speech on Social Media

The Supreme Court recently announced that it is going to hear two major cases relating to the right of free expression.

Both cases will examine the constitutionality of state laws that were created to prohibit tech companies from discriminating against social media platform users who are ideologically conservative.

At the heart of the cases is Big Tech’s pattern of targeting and eliminating select content.

The passage by state legislators in 2021 of the laws in question came in response to censorship of user-generated content, which was taking place on social media sites.

The Texas and Florida legislatures were acting on behalf of their constituents in using their lawmaking capabilities to try and restore freedom of expression to the portion of the digital world that was being impacted by selective censorship.

It is regrettable, to say the least, that the redacting of factual information, political ideology, faith expression, and the like, which frequently runs contrary to today’s progressive and/or radical narratives, is routine business for a majority of Big Tech companies.

The Texas and Florida legislators engaged in the appropriate processes in an effort to address the censorship problem.

Texas law H.B. 20 bars social media platforms with at least 50 million active users from blocking, removing, or demonetizing content based on a respective user’s point of view. Similar to phone companies, the law re-classifies social media platforms as “common carriers.”

Florida law S.B. 7072 forbids large social media platforms from censoring or banning political candidates and what the law refers to as a “journalistic enterprise.” The Florida bill also mandates that social media companies publish standards for the removal of content as well as for exercising consistency in the application of such standards.

Technology industry groups NetChoice and the Computer & Communications Industry Association have challenged each of the state laws. Members of the groups include TikTok, X, formerly called Twitter, and the owners of Facebook and Google.

The Biden administration joined with the technology groups, arguing that social media platforms’ rights include those of censoring the content of customers.

Two appeals courts have given conflicting rulings over the two state laws. One of the appellate courts upheld the Texas law, but another struck down the Florida statute. In both cases, implementation of the state laws during appeals has been temporarily halted by federal courts.

In May of 2022, the Supreme Court (by a 5-4 ruling) kept the Texas law on hold during the process of litigation.

Justice Samuel Alito was part of a dissenting opinion, which said that the law should be left in place and that the issues were so novel and significant that the Supreme Court would have to consider them at some point. The justice wrote, “Social media platforms have transformed the way people communicate with each other and obtain news.”

Justice Alito added, “At issue is a groundbreaking Texas law that addresses the power of dominant social media corporations to shape public discussion of the important issues of the day.”

The justice also expressed skepticism toward the argument that social media companies have editorial discretion protected by the First Amendment, such as the kind that newspapers and other traditional publishers enjoy.

The aforementioned tech trade groups, along with the Biden administration, are contending that the Constitution protects the social media platforms’ elimination of so-called disinformation.

Tech companies claim that taking away their unfettered right to censor will mean that their platforms will be filled with the vague categories they are claiming pose a danger, e.g. bullying, extremism, and hate speech.

However, the High Court will look closely at the carve-outs that state legislators placed in the laws to permit platforms to perform legitimate functions. These exceptions allow categories of content, such as pornography and foreign government speech, to be removed by the tech companies.

The above mentioned cases, which will be heard in the new nine-month term that recently began, will ultimately answer a single question of utmost importance: Do states have the ability to put a halt to speech discrimination by tech companies?

Social media platforms have become essential communication components of everyday life.

They allow us to connect and interact with individuals, organizations, educational institutions, governmental bodies, health agencies, etc.

Pray that the Supreme Court decides in favor of a free internet so free speech can live.

The Wayward Seven

To the heartbreak of millions of Americans who were hoping that the Supreme Court would give justice a fighting chance in the current fog of electoral war, seven of the nine members of the High Court simply slunk away last Friday without even lending an ear.

Just about a week ago, shortly before midnight, the state of Texas filed a lawsuit directly with the U.S. Supreme Court. In the suit, Texas challenged the election procedures that had taken place in the states of Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.

The seven members of the High Court, who took the position that Texas and the other co-plaintiff states would not be allowed to have their case heard, committed a fundamental error.

The justices may have been influenced by a slew of legal prognosticators, some of whom had taken to the Democrat dominated media to ridicule the Texas attorney general for having initiated the action in the first place.

Others spread a message that conveyed an overly simplistic analysis, claiming that the process of selecting electors to send to the Electoral College is a matter that is handled by individual states, and therefore if a federal court, in this case the Supreme Court, were to hear it, the court would be intruding on state sovereignty.

The fact of the matter is the U.S. Constitution uniquely prescribes the manner in which presidential elections are to be implemented, and exactly where the authority for such implementation resides.

The authority is granted exclusively to the state legislatures of each respective state. The High Court has referred to this power to select electors as a “plenary” one, i.e., all encompassing.

The statehouses are given an exclusive grant of authority to determine the manner in which the states’ presidential electors are chosen. This is a distinct and explicit constitutional mandate, a federal matter, appropriately decided in the federal court system and, if necessary, the court of last resort, the Supreme Court.

The textual constitutional language in this regard is specific and unambiguous, setting forth a singular authority that precludes state officials, state executives, and even state courts from altering or contradicting statehouses, when it comes to the selection of electors for the purposes of choosing the President of the United States.

The Constitution also specifies that the Supreme Court will have original jurisdiction over “disputes among the states,” meaning that when Texas needs to adjudicate a matter involving a disagreement with another state (or states), the Supreme Court is the only place to go in order to seek resolution or remedies in law or equity.

Texas and its fellow co-plaintiff states were not questioning the election laws of the defendant states, but rather they were claiming that “non-legislative actors,” i.e., governors, secretaries of state, election officials, and state courts, unconstitutionally altered and overrode the election laws that had been duly passed by state legislatures.

The threshold issue that was before the Supreme Court was whether the constitutional prescription for the selection of electors had been violated by non-legislative actors. This was, and will always remain, central to the functioning of our republic, and it is a premise that is vitally important for all of the justices to recognize.

Seven simply did not. These wayward seven failed to allow the case to move forward.

How were their decisions justified?

They avoided hearing the case on the merits, claiming that the prospective plaintiffs in the case lacked “standing.”

Standing is the principle that limits the hearing of cases to those individuals or entities that demonstrate specific harm has been suffered or that a particular legal interest has been detrimentally affected.

The harm in this case is quite obvious — unconstitutional behavior that results in illegal voting in one state damages legitimate voting in other states.

In this case, electors in Texas were canceled out by electors in states where illegitimate votes were produced by unconstitutional processes.

A huge segment of the American population believes that the 2020 presidential election was illegitimate, due to widespread and multifaceted fraud. This huge segment yearns for, and is entitled to, a judicial review of the mounting evidence.

Thus far, no determination with regard to the merits of the case has been made.

Similar, if not identical claims from other plaintiffs, ones that possess a stronger argument on the issue of standing, will arrive at the Supreme Court soon.

The seven members of the High Court get another shot at justice.