The Texas legislature passed and Governor Greg Abbott signed Texas statute HB 20 “prohibiting viewpoint-based censorship by some social media platforms”.  It essentially forces social media companies such as Meta (Facebook), Twitter, Instagram, Tictok and YouTube “to publish all user posts that express a viewpoint.”  

The law supposedly prevents the censorship of conservative views.  What it actually does is prevents social media companies from removing lies and crazy conspiracy theories from their platforms; otherwise they could face law suits from users in Texas that post those falsehoods. 

The social media companies filed a federal lawsuit challenging the law and asked for an injunction to block it until their case can be heard.  A federal district court granted their injunction, but that ruling was reversed by the very conservative Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals.  The law is now scheduled to go into affect Wednesday 5/19/22.

 The social media companies have now asked the Supreme Court for an emergency stay to the ruling of the circuit court and the granting of their requested injunction based on their free speech rights and other constitutional considerations.  Appeals from the Fifth Circuit are handled by Justice Samuel Alito.  He can decide to unilaterally grant the injunction, deny it, or have the entire Supreme Court decide the matter.  The social media companies will have to start complying with the law Wednesday unless the high court intervenes.

Normally a law which inhibits the freedom of a corporation (defined as a “person” under the Constitution by the Supreme Court) to police their private websites would be struck down as unconstitutional without hesitation by the courts.  However, our Federal courts have become highly politicized. 

Traditionally it would be conservatives who would object to a government dictating to private corporations how they should conduct their business.  However, this time it is conservative Texas politicians who are sucking up to their conservative constituents who are angry because their proven lies are being deleted from social media. 

Supreme Court analysts believe that Justice Alito will have the entire court rule on whether to grant the emergency injunction, but given that the high court now has a bullet proof five justice conservative majority whose members have acted more like partisan politicians than impartial judges, there is a reasonable chance that the Texas law will go into affect as scheduled.

If the emergency appeal is not granted by the Supreme Court the social media companies should temporarily delete every user known to be a Texan from their user rolls, not accept any posts originating from IP addresses in the state. They should also immediately close any and all of their offices located in Texas and declare that they no longer operate in the state of Texas. They then won’t have to deal with this ridiculous Texas law and Texas politicians can then deal with user complaints that they can no longer post on social media.

Rick Guilbeau