Hello friends. I'm Jeffrey Rosen president and CEO of the National

Constitution Center and welcome to We The People, a weekly show of

constitutional debate. The National Constitution Center is a nonpartisan nonprofit

chartered by Congress to increase awareness and understanding of the Constitution

among the American people.

This week, the National Constitution Center hosted a conversation with two state attorneys general.

Doug Peterson, Republican of Nebraska and Phil Weiser Democrat of Colorado to discuss social media and public health.

It turned out to be perfect timing as the Supreme Court just blocked Texas from enforcing a law that would prohibit social media

platforms from removing posts based on viewpoint.

Today on we the people, we discussed the role of State Attorneys General and State law in addressing the potential harms posed by social media platforms to public health, privacy and competition, as well as constraints on regulation imposed by the First Amendment.

This conversation was presented in partnership with a center for excellence in governance

at the National Association of Attorneys General and was streamed live on June 1st, 2022.

Enjoy the show.

Thank you so much for joining Attorney General's Peterson and Weiser.

All of us are learning in real time about this Texas decision that just came down yesterday.

So I'm just going to read a broad summary from it. The court issued an order which has a separate statement by Judge Samuel Lido and then we'll read through it in real time and discuss its possible implication.

So reading from the New York Times summary, the Supreme Court on Tuesday blocked a Texas law that would ban large social media companies from removing posts based on the views they express.

The court didn't give reasons, and in fact there was an unusual coalition with in dissent with the most

conservative members justices Alito Thomas and Gorsuch joined by Justice

Kagan that had more to do with the question of when the court should

intervene not their views on the merits. But Justice Alito wrote a separate

statement where he said the issues were so novel and significant that the

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