I'm glad to be able to pass along this item from Prof. Candeub (who has written extensively on this general subject):
The Texas social media law (H.B. 20) requires the major social media platforms to refrain from discrimination on the basis of viewpoint, thereby allowing those of all political, religious, and social views to participate in what the Supreme Court has called our "modern public square." The platforms challenged the law on First Amendment grounds in NetChoice v. Paxton, and the Court heard argument last February.
One of the arguments in favor of the law is that Texas can impose non-discrimination mandates on social media firms pursuant to its power to regulate public accommodation and common carriers. Grounded in actions of assumpsit dating back to the early-17th century common law, public accommodation law traditionally required businesses making generalized offerings of goods or services to the public to accept all customers—though at common law, such businesses could refuse or terminate a service offered to all in a general undertaking if they offered a legally valid reason, as Adam J. MacLeod explains. Property owners do not have absolute rights under the First Amendment to exclude speakers or speech they dislike or wish to suppress. Modern public accommodation, first codified in the mid-19th century, rejects certain types of discrimination as valid.
Similarly, under common carrier law, a legal category that predates public accommodations, firms that engage in the business of transmitting messages as part of an undertaking to provide carriage to everyone, such as letter and package carriers, telephones and telegraphs, must carry the speech of all regardless of viewpoint or the content of the message, as I explain.
