The Supreme Court Blocks the Texas Social Media Law

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4.7 • 6.2K Ratings

🗓️ 9 June 2022

⏱️ 61 minutes

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Summary

On May 31, by a five-four vote, the Supreme Court blocked a Texas law from going into effect that would have sharply limited how social media companies could moderate their platforms and required companies to abide by various transparency requirements. We’ve covered the law on this show before—we recorded an episode right after the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit allowed Texas to implement the law, in the same ruling that the Supreme Court just vacated. But there’s enough interesting stuff in the Supreme Court’s order—and in Justice Samuel Alito’s dissent—that we thought it was worth another bite at the apple.

So this week on Arbiters of Truth, our series on the online information ecosystem, Evelyn Douek and Quinta Jurecic invited Genevieve Lakier, professor of law at the University of Chicago and Evelyn’s colleague at the Knight First Amendment Institute, to walk us through just what happened. What exactly did the Supreme Court do? Why does Justice Alito seem to think that the Texas law has a decent chance of surviving a First Amendment challenge? And what does this suggest about the possible futures of the extremely unsettled landscape of First Amendment law?

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Transcript

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0:00.0	The following podcast contains advertising to access an ad-free version of the LawFair
0:07.2	podcast become a material supporter of LawFair at patreon.com slash LawFair.
0:14.7	That's patreon.com slash LawFair.
0:18.2	Also, check out LawFair's other podcast offerings, rational security, chatter, LawFair
0:25.6	no bull and the aftermath.
0:32.6	You know, it's the liberal justice on the court who have historically thought with some sympathy
0:37.9	with I guess a leader's position in some cases that, you know, our current First Amendment
0:42.1	is maybe too deregulatory.
0:43.7	So it's not impossible for me to imagine an opinion coming out of the Supreme Court that
0:50.1	gives the government a little bit more power than we might otherwise think to regulate
0:53.7	the social media platforms.
0:55.7	I'm Quinted Jurassic and this is the LawFair podcast June 9th, 2022.
1:03.0	Today we're bringing you another episode of our Arbiter's of Truth series on the online
1:06.7	information ecosystem and we're discussing litigation that could have major implications
1:12.1	for First Amendment law and government regulation of social media platforms.
1:17.9	On May 31st by a 5.4 vote, the Supreme Court blocked a Texas law from going into effect
1:23.4	that would have sharply limited how social media companies could moderate their platforms
1:27.5	and would have required companies to abide by various transparency requirements.
1:32.4	We've covered the law on this show before.
1:35.3	We recorded an episode right after the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit allowed
1:39.4	Texas to implement the law in the same ruling that the Supreme Court just vacated.
1:44.8	But there's enough interesting stuff in the Supreme Court's order and in just a Samuel
	...

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