“Today we reject the notion that corporations have a free First Amendment right to censor what people say,” the justices wrote. The decision is a defeat for the tech industry, which had sued to block the law, claiming it was unconstitutional. Earlier this year, another appeals court blocked a similar law in Florida, citing the same arguments. Texas officials passed HB 20 last year amid allegations that tech platforms unfairly censor conservative speech. Social media companies have widely denied the allegations, but Texas law imposes sweeping obligations on the platforms, barring them from moving to “block, ban, remove, deplatform, monetize, release, restrict, deny equal access or visibility, or by another way they discriminate against expression’. Leading legal experts have said that if HB 20 survives a legal challenge, tech companies would be forced to host spam, hate speech, pornography and other legal but problematic material on their platforms in order to comply with the law’s text. It could also serve as a blueprint for other states. More broadly, they said, allowing the government to compel private parties to host speech would reverse decades of First Amendment precedent, which has held that the government cannot compel private speech. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton celebrated the court’s ruling in a tweet, saying, “Just secured a MASSIVE VICTORY for the Constitution and Free Speech in Fed Court: #BigTech CANNOT censor the political voices of any Texan! ». The Computer and Communications Industry Association, one of the technology trade groups that had sued to block the law, said it strongly disagreed with the court’s decision. “Forcing private companies to give equal treatment to all viewpoints on their platforms puts foreign propaganda and extremism on equal footing with decent Internet users and puts Americans at risk,” said Matt Schruers, president of the CCIA. “‘God Bless America’ and ‘Death to America’ are both opinions, and it is unreasonable and unconstitutional for the State of Texas to compel a private business to treat them the same.” With the Fifth Circuit having reached a different conclusion than the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals on similar issues, the stage is set for the issue to be decided by the Supreme Court. In May, the Supreme Court temporarily blocked HB 20 from taking effect in an emergency order as the appeal continued. The 5-4 vote sent the case back to the Fifth Circuit, with Friday’s result upholding HB 20. The Fifth Circuit’s ruling does not reverse the Supreme Court’s move to put the law on hold. Dissenting with his colleagues, however, Justice Samuel Alito wrote that the trial over HB 20 raises questions of “significant importance” about a “groundbreaking” law that confronts “the power of dominant social media companies to shape the public debate about the important issues of the day”.
