The Supreme Court of the United States will decide whether the states of the country can regulate the content published by social networks in their territories, having agreed this Friday to study whether the laws approved in Texas and Florida for this purpose are constitutional.
The Supreme Court announced that it will study this case and respond to a political controversy that dates back to the beginning of 2021, when big technology companies put a stop to the ultraconservatives after the assault on the Capitol and decided, among other measures, to suspend accounts on Twitter or Facebook of former US President Donald Trump.
This battle between state governments and big technology companies will be one of the main cases that the highest American judicial body will have to study in the next course, which for this institution begins next Monday.
The Supreme Court reported this Tuesday that it will include the case in its calendar this year.
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The laws of Texas and Florida that the Court will study
The Supreme Court will analyze the constitutionality of the laws of the two states that They restrict the possibilities of social networks to take measures against disinformation policy.
The laws were approved in Florida and Texas following the January 6, 2021 assault on the Capitol in Washington by supporters of Donald Trump.
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After that attack, important social media platforms suspended accounts linked to the former Republican president and other political content.
The measure prompted American conservatives to accuse sites like Facebook or YouTube of censorship, and precipitated the enactment of laws in Republican-governed states, arguing that technology companies were censoring content that users wanted to post, in many cases right-wing points of view.
Earlier this year, the nine-member Supreme Court narrowly voted to suspend the controversial laws.
The decision was rejected by three conservative judges, for whom the “innovative” Texas law governing the activity of the main platforms needed special treatment and the jurisprudence on freedom of expression was not necessarily adequate to address this issue.
The case was brought to the highest court in the country by associations representing large technology companies, the Computer & Communications Industry Association and NetChoice, for which Platforms have the freedom to handle content as they see fit.
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The companies also appealed these laws, claiming that they violate the First Amendment by trying to intervene in the operation of said networks.
Joe Biden’s administration urged the Supreme Court to take up the case, stating that content moderation decisions are covered by the First Amendment, which protects free speech.
The Texas and Florida laws went into effect as Washington struggles to update federal laws governing life online, and states increasingly set their own rules.
“Large social media platforms are the new public space for communication, protest, speech and expression, but that does not necessarily make them a government-regulated public forum,” said Professor Roy S. Gutterman of the Tully Center for Freedom of Expression at Syracuse University.
*With AFP and EFE
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