Moody v. NetChoice, LLC

Decided: July 1, 2024
Citation:Moody v. NetChoice, LLC and NetChoice, LLC v. Paxton, 603 U.S. ___ (2024)
Appeal from: Eleventh Circuit; Fifth Circuit
Case document:Moody v. NetChoice, LLC

Facts of the case
In 2021, both Florida and Texas passed laws seeking to regulate the ability of large internet platforms (such as Facebook and X) to moderate their user's content on the platforms. NetChoice, an internet trade association, filed lawsuits challenging both laws in Florida and Texas, arguing that they violated the First Amendment. The district courts in both states agreed with NetChoice and issued preliminary injunctions to prevent the laws from taking effect. Florida and Texas appealed, and the Eleventh Circuit upheld the injunction, while the Fifth Circuit reversed the injunction. The Supreme Court granted certiorari.

Question for the Court
The Court considered whether the Florida and Texas state laws regulating large internet platforms violated the First Amendment.

Decision
In a 9-0 decisionby Justice Kagan on July 1, 2024, the judgments of the Eleventh and Fifth Circuit are vacated and remanded, the Court finding that neither of the Circuit Courts conducted a proper analysis of the facial First Amendment challenges to the state laws. Further, Kagan's opinion (joined in full by Justices Robert, Sotomayor, Kavanaugh and Barrett) stated that the platforms' "choices about which messages are appropriate give the feed a particular expressive quality and 'constitute the exercise' of protected 'editorial control''. In a concurrence, Justice Jackson suggested the Court should show restraint in deciding these questions.

Justice Alito's concurrence (joined by Justices Thomas and Gorsuch) showed skepticism that NetChoice had met its burden in proving that the laws are facially invalid. Alito made a distinction between "[n]ewspaper editors [that] are real human beings" compared to the "platforms, by contrast, [that] play no role in selecting the billions of texts and videos that users try to convey to each other." He went on to state that "algorithms remove a small fraction of nonconforming posts post hoc and prioritize content based on factors that the platforms have not revealed and may not even know."

Free press implications
It remains to be seen what impact this decision has on the free press, given both cases must be relitigated in the lower courts. The opinion provides support for protecting the editorial discretion freedoms expressed in Miami Herald Pub. Co. v. Tornillo, but also a divergence in opinion among the justices when comparing a traditional newspaper's exercise of editorial discretion compared to the various ways a large internet platform moderates content. In Justice Barrett's concurrence, she notes that an as applied challenge would enable a court to determine "whether and how specific functions-like feeds versus direct messaging-are inherently expressive". In the meantime, both states' laws will remain blocked.

For further reading, please visit:
SCOTUS blog: NetChoice v. Paxton
SCOTUS blog: NetChoice v. Moody