Texas Can't Start Enforcing Social Media Law, Says SCOTUS
Plus: Who's bringing fentanyl across the border? Will Austin become a sanctuary city for abortion? And more...
The Supreme Court has temporarily blocked enforcement of a Texas tech law. The law treats large social media platforms like common carriers and prohibits them from making independent decisions about content moderation.
Specifically, the law bans large tech companies from viewpoint-based blocking, restricting, or editorializing about social media content—a purview large enough to prevent platforms from moderating even the types of content that few would object to a private company limiting. It also requires them to set up an appeal system for users whose content is removed.
The U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas held last December that the Texas social media law was unconstitutional. But the law recently scored a win with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit, which in May issued a stay on the district court's decision.
That meant Texas was free to start enforcing the law.
In response, tech industry groups NetChoice and the Computer and Communications Industry Association (CCIA) asked the Supreme Court to intervene and vacate the 5th Circuit's stay.
And now it has, in a 5-4 decision issued Tuesday.
The majority—a conservative-liberal mix that included Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett—did not offer reasoning for their ruling.
A dissent penned by Justice Samuel Alito, joined by Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch, can be found here. Justice Elena Kagan also dissented.
To be clear, the headline here is *not* the dissent; it's that Chief Justice Roberts, Justice Kavanaugh, and Justice Barrett *all* voted to block HB20.
That's a pretty powerful sign of where #SCOTUS is heading on this case—and issue—even if the dissent's analysis is … alarming. https://t.co/3BN1t9KO3C
— Steve Vladeck (@steve_vladeck) May 31, 2022
SCOTUS' decision means that Texas cannot start trying to treat large internet platforms like common carriers while the case plays out. But the 5th Circuit is still mulling the merits of the NetChoice and CCIA case against the law.
FREE MINDS
Data on fentanyl seizures at the Southern border challenges the conservative narrative:
NEW! I cataloged every CBP press release and official Twitter post about fentanyl seizures at the southern border over the last 6 months. The data makes it crystal clear—it's not migrants.
Only TWO publicly-reported seizures were linked to people crossing between ports of entry. pic.twitter.com/eBM9oJn8Rw
— Aaron Reichlin-Melnick (@ReichlinMelnick) May 31, 2022
FREE MARKETS
Will the city of Austin defy a potential Texas law criminalizing abortion? The state law—which makes it a felony to perform an abortion—will go into effect if Roe v. Wade is overturned. Some believe the law's language is loose enough that it would criminalize not just abortion doctors but women who try to self-induce an abortion with medication. But in Austin, "Councilmember Chito Vela is proposing a resolution that would direct the city's police department to make criminal enforcement, arrest and investigation of abortions its lowest priority and restrict city funds and city staff from being used to investigate, catalogue or report suspected abortions," notes Politico.
"This is not an academic conversation," Vela told Politico. "This is a very real conversation where people's lives could be destroyed by these criminal prosecutions. In Texas, you're an adult at 17. We are looking at the prospect of a 17-year-old girl who has an unplanned pregnancy and is seeking an abortion [being] subjected to first-degree felony charges — up to 99 years in jail — and that's just absolutely unacceptable."
FOLLOWUP
• News that the Uvalde, Texas, shooter entered Robb Elementary School through a door a teacher left propped open turns out to be false. Video footage shows the teacher shutting the door, which was supposed to lock automatically when closed but for some reason did not.
• "The Uvalde Police Department and the Uvalde Independent School District police force are no longer cooperating with the Texas Department of Public Safety's investigation into the massacre at Robb Elementary School and the state's review of the law enforcement response," reports ABC News.
• The first funerals for victims of the Uvalde shooting were held on Tuesday for 10-year-old Amerie Joe Garza and for Ellie Garcia, who would have turned 10 on Saturday. "This week alone there will be 11 funerals," The Texas Tribune reports.
QUICK HITS
• The Department of Justice is appealing the court ruling ending the federal mask mandate on airplanes and other transit.
• A new Gallup poll on economic confidence finds "the lowest reading in Gallup's trend during the coronavirus pandemic, and likely the lowest confidence has been since the tail end of the Great Recession in early 2009."
• "The good news is that there are some promising technical solutions for making plastics infinitely recyclable on the horizon," writes Reason's Ron Bailey in response to a recent Atlantic article that said plastics recycling will never work so single-use plastics should be banned.
• Are Democrats souring on Sen. Amy Klobuchar's (D–Minn.) antitrust bill?
• A reminder that J.D. Vance wants to ban porn.
• What?
A California appeals court has ruled that bees are "fish" for purposes of the state's endangered species act. While "commonly understood" that a fish "lives in aquatic environments," "terrestrial invertebrate[s]," including bumble bees, qualify legally. https://t.co/X1ShOKFYYQ pic.twitter.com/Htr8OfKjAO
— Ajit Pai (@AjitPai) May 31, 2022