A federal appeals court has granted X Corp.’s request to block part of a California state law that requires social media platforms to disclose their content moderation and anti-hate speech policies.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit issued an order on Sept. 4 that grants X Corp.’s request for a preliminary injunction and reverses a district court’s ruling against the Elon Musk-owned social media company in a legal challenge to California’s Assembly Bill (AB) 587.
The court said the bill’s content-moderation provisions are not narrowly tailored to serve California’s purported goal of requiring social media companies to be transparent about their content-related practices, and may amount to unconstitutionally compelled speech.
“The panel held that X Corp. was likely to succeed on the merits of its claim that the Content Category Report provisions facially violate the First Amendment,” the appeals court judges wrote in their opinion.
AB 587 requires large social media companies to post their terms of service and to submit periodic reports to the California Attorney General’s office about their content-moderation practices and policies.
A key provision of the bill requires a semiannual report detailing how the platforms define six categories of content: hate speech or racism; extremism or radicalization; disinformation and misinformation; harassment; foreign political interference; and controlled substance distribution.
X Corp. argued in its lawsuit, which named California Attorney General Robert Bonta as defendant, that the law intends to pressure social media companies to censor content that the government deems objectionable and improperly compels speech in violation of the First Amendment.
“The legislative record is crystal clear that one of the main purposes of AB 587—if not the main purpose—is to pressure social media companies to eliminate or minimize content that the government has deemed objectionable,” X Corp. attorneys argued in their complaint.
In December 2023, a district court handed X Corp. a loss, denying the company’s request for a preliminary injunction. U.S. District Judge William Shubb found that the Content Category Report provisions aren’t “unjustified or unduly burdensome within the context of First Amendment law.”
Shubb acknowledged in his order that compliance with the provisions may carry a significant burden on social media companies, but he concluded that the periodic reports that include the mandated content policy and practice disclosures are merely factual and “uncontroversial.”
“The mere fact that the reports may be ‘tied in some way to a controversial issue’ does not make the reports themselves controversial,” the judge wrote in his eight-page opinion.
The district court judge determined that X Corp. was unlikely to succeed on the merits of its First Amendment claim and that the bill’s provisions are reasonably related to the state’s interest in transparency.
X Corp. appealed, leading to the Sept. 4 ruling, holding that the Content Category Report provisions likely compel noncommercial speech and probably fail the strict scrutiny standard because they are not narrowly tailored to serve the state’s transparency interest.
In reversing the lower court’s decision to deny X Corp.’s request for a preliminary injunction, the 9th Circuit instructed the district court to issue one in line with the panel’s opinion. In addition, the lower court must determine if the Content Category Report provisions can be separated from the rest of AB 587 and, if so, to determine whether any other challenged provisions should also be blocked.
A spokesperson for the California Attorney General’s office told The Epoch Times in an emailed statement that it’s reviewing the opinion and “will respond appropriately in court.”
The legal battle between X Corp. and the state of California over AB 587 is part of a broader trend where social media platforms and industry groups have pushed back against laws around content moderation on First Amendment grounds.
Recently, the 9th Circuit appeals court issued a ruling that upheld the data privacy-related provisions of California’s online child safety laws, while striking down those that required social media platforms to assess and mitigate risks of harmful content. The appeals court found that the blocked provisions likely violate free speech rights.
