Judge Blocks Florida Law Barring Twitter, Facebook Bans of Candidates
Restrictions on social-media companies seen as likely violating First Amendment and conflicting with federal law
Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis in May signed legislation prohibiting social-media sites from banning any candidate running for public office in Florida.
PHOTO: CARL JUSTE/TNS/ZUMA PRESS
By Jacob Gershman
Updated June 30, 2021 11:15 pm ET
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A federal judge in Florida on Wednesday blocked the state from enforcing key parts of a new law that makes social-media companies such as Twitter Inc. and Facebook Inc. potentially liable for censoring political candidates, the news media and other users.
U.S. District Judge Robert Hinkle in Tallahassee granted an injunction against the law hours before it was slated to take effect. In a 31-page opinion, he said the statute’s restrictions on content removal and its liability provisions likely violate the First Amendment and conflict with federal law.
He declined to halt another part of the law that allows state authorities to bar a social-media company from state-government contracts if it is accused of an antitrust violation. Judge Hinkle said that provision raised legal issues but posed no immediate threat to internet companies that justified emergency intervention.
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The legislation, which was signed by Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis in May, prohibits social-media sites from banning any candidate running for public office in Florida, subjecting violators to fines of as much as $250,000 a day. It also restricts sites from censoring “journalistic enterprises” based on their content and gives Florida residents the ability to bring lawsuits and recover statutory and punitive damages against companies that fail to apply their content standards consistently. The law left undefined the standard of consistency imposed.
In an unusual carve-out, the state exempts companies that own and operate a theme park.
Mr. DeSantis said the law acted as protection against a “Silicon Valley power grab on speech, thought, and content.” Republicans more widely have accused tech firms of biased censorship during the debate over speech rights and the spread of misinformation in the digital age. Legislators cited the expulsion of former President Donald Trump from big social-media platforms and the suppression of the New York Post’s reporting on Hunter Biden as reasons why the law was needed. (The Post and The Wall Street Journal are both owned by News Corp.)
Industry trade groups representing major tech platforms, including Facebook, Twitter and Alphabet Inc.’s Google, challenged the law in court, arguing that the statute violated their constitutional rights to make editorial judgments about content moderation. They also argued that the statute is pre-empted by Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, a 25-year-old federal law that shields internet platforms from lawsuits for content generated by third parties and that allows sites to remove content they find objectionable without fear of liability.
In court papers, the tech industry warned that the Florida law would weaken policing of unlawful content, including terrorist propaganda.
Judge Hinkle, an appointee of President Bill Clinton, said the bill restricted speech by dictating to social-media companies who can use their sites and what content they can post. Citing legislators’ public comments, the judge said lawmakers appeared to be motivated by a desire to protect conservative voices from internet censorship. He said such speech restrictions on companies based on their perceived viewpoint required Florida to show that there was a powerful public need for the law and that enacting anything more limited wouldn’t do.
Florida failed to show that need, he wrote. “Leveling the playing field—promoting speech on one side of an issue or restricting speech on the other—is not a legitimate state interest,” his opinion stated.
The president of the Computer & Communications Industry Association, a co-plaintiff in the lawsuit, said Wednesday that Judge Hinkle’s ruling “reaffirms what we have been saying: Florida’s statute is an extraordinary overreach.”
Mr. DeSantis’s office said the state would appeal the ruling to the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. “We are disappointed by Judge Hinkle’s ruling and disagree with his determination that the U.S. Constitution protects Big Tech’s censorship of certain individuals and content over others,” a statement from the governor’s office said.
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Appeared in the July 1, 2021, print edition as 'Florida Law Targeting Social Media Blocked.'