In today's ruling in Moody v. NetChoice, addressing challenges to Texas and Florida laws severely limiting social media content moderation, the Supreme Court declined to issue a final ruling on the merits, for procedural reasons. But in remanding the cases to the lower courts, Justice Elena Kagan's majority opinion also established standards under which the major provisions of the two laws would almost certainly have to be ruled unconstitutional. I was highly critical of last week's decision denying standing to plaintiffs challenging the federal government's efforts to pressure social media firms to take down posts. Today's ruling is far better. Hopefully, the Court will eventually make clear that the government is presumptively barred from either forcing social media providers to take down posts it disapproves of or forcing them to post material the website owners object to.
