A federal judge has denied Florida’s motion to dismiss a lawsuit against a 2021 law punishing social media platforms for alleged censorship of conservatives.
U.S. District Judge Robert Hinkle of the Northern District of Florida issued an order Thursday denying the state’s motions to toss the suit brought by two trade associations representing social media giants and to compel those companies to turn over information about their internal policies.
The order came weeks after Hinkle held a hearing in Tallahassee in which he said he’s still perplexed about what the Legislature meant to accomplish by trying to limit social media content moderation. Hinkle wrote that neither the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit nor the U.S. Supreme Court had questioned the plaintiffs’ standing to sue Florida.
NetChoice and co-plaintiff Computer & Communications Industry Association (CCIA) argue that the law violates the First Amendment and is unconstitutionally vague. The two groups represent a number of the biggest social media companies, including Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Reddit, Apple, and Pinterest.
“Once again, a judge has confirmed the importance of the First Amendment, rejecting Florida’s attempts to evade review of its unconstitutional statute,” wrote Stephanie Joyce, director of CCIA’s Litigation Center, in a press release Thursday. “This law tries to force websites to speak as the state commands, which strikes at the heart of free discourse and democracy. We now move forward with demonstrating why this law must be struck down.”
Hinkle is revisiting the case after the country’s highest court punted it back to the Eleventh Circuit because the justices found that the appellate court had not conducted a proper analysis of the groups’ First Amendment challenges, which in turn sent the case back to Hinkle.
Trump’s banishment
The law the Legislature passed following then-former President Donald Trump’s banishment from social media platforms after the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol prohibits deplatforming any candidate for statewide political office. Additionally, SB 7072 granted the Florida Election Commission authority to fine platforms with gross revenues of more than $100 million or more than 100 million monthly users $250,000 per day for banning statewide candidates and $25,000 per day for candidates for other offices.
In his order Thursday, Hinkle wrote that provisions in the law, such as one banning platforms from placing candidates’ posts or posts about them in a less prominent position, would give candidates a statutory right to flood users’ feeds.
“The defendants have not attempted to explain what these provisions really mean or how they would be applied. Nor have the defendants offered any theory under which a state can preclude this kind of curating without violating the First Amendment,” Hinkle wrote.
Still, Hinkle, who originally issued a preliminary injunction blocking enforcement of the law, leaned toward a belief that provisions of the law are unconstitutional as applied to some of the companies rather than considering the law unconstitutional on its face. He used that reasoning to deny the state’s motion to force the plaintiffs to turn over more information about specific companies.
“The plaintiffs’ facial challenge to SB 7072, and perhaps even to its various provisions viewed in isolation, is likely to fail — and the disputed discovery, if allowed, would almost surely make no difference,” Hinkle wrote.
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