The following statement can be attributed to Chris Mohr, President, Software & Information Industry Association.
The ability for private entities to decide what to publish, and what not to publish, is a fundamental lynchpin of First Amendment freedoms. Florida’s and Texas’ abridgement of these rights warrants immediate Supreme Court review. SIIA supports the Biden Administration’s filing with the Supreme Court to strike down parts of Florida and Texas laws that would sharply restrict the editorial discretion of social media platforms including SIIA members Meta and Google.
As the government correctly notes, these laws unconstitutionally restrict platforms’ ability to engage in content moderation by restricting their choices about whether and how to present user-generated content to the public, and impermissibly burden constitutionally protected editorial decisions by requiring the creation of an explanation every time a platform makes a decision to remove user content. The platforms should have the right to decide what content is appropriate and remove content that they believe is harmful to themselves or the public.
Indeed, these laws are so extraordinary and the implications so broad that we believe that the Court should review all the challenged provisions of the law.
