from Fast Company The Supreme Court on Friday agreed to hear two cases that stand to have sweeping consequences on First Amendment rights of online platforms and their ability to moderate content. The cases—NetChoice v. Paxton and Moody v. NetChoice—challenge the constitutionality of two separate laws passed in Florida and Texas, both of which sought to limit the type of content that online platforms could remove or downrank. In Florida, the law specifically prohibits these companies from “deplatforming” politicians or prioritizing or deprioritizing posts “by or about” political candidates, among other things. In Texas, the law bans platforms from moderating […]
Continue readingTag Archives: Law
Court Tosses Arkansas Age Verification Law For Violating The 1st Amendment
from TechDirt Just after a judge granted an injunction against Texas’ adult content age verification law on 1st Amendment grounds, a judge in Arkansas did the same to that state’s social media age verification law. Trade organization NetChoice had challenged the law, and the court basically gave them a complete and total victory. Just like the ruling in Texas, the opinion here is a good read. As with Texas, Arkansas relied on Tony Allen, who represents the age verification providers, to claim that the technology works great and the laws are fine. As in Texas, the court here is not […]
Continue readingOnce-Suspended Twitter User Argues California Violated His First Amendment Rights
from SCOTUSblog Last week the federal government encouraged the justices to review a pair of petitions involving two nearly identical laws in Florida and Texas that seek to regulate how large social media platforms can block, remove, or demonetize user content. Lawmakers in both states passed the bills to address what they perceive as censorship of conservative viewpoints; the platforms countered that the laws violate their own First Amendment rights. This week, we highlight cert petitions that ask the court to consider, among other things, a First Amendment challenge against efforts by another populous state, California, to regulate online content. […]
Continue readingThe Fallout From the First Trial of a Corporate Executive for ‘Covering Up’ a Data Breach
from Lawfare Uber’s former chief security officer (CSO), Joe Sullivan, was found guilty on Oct. 5 of obstruction of justice (18 U.S.C. § 1505) and misprision of a felony (18 U.S.C. § 4) based on what the Justice Department called his “attempted cover-up of a 2016 hack of Uber.” In 2016, while the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) was investigating Uber for an earlier incident, Sullivan learned of another hacking incident that affected the Uber accounts of more than 57 million riders and drivers. In its prosecution of Sullivan, the government alleged that, rather than disclose the incident to the FTC, […]
Continue readingDecember Argument Session Will Feature Divisive Cases On Election Law, First Amendment
from SCOTUSblog The Supreme Court’s December argument session will feature two of the highest-profile cases of the 2022-23 term: a free-speech claim by a website designer who opposes same-sex marriage and a case involving the power of state legislatures to set rules for federal elections. That news came with the release of the court’s December argument calendar on Tuesday. The justices will hear argument in 303 Creative v. Elenis, the case brought by Colorado website designer Lorie Smith, on Dec. 5. Smith wants to expand her business to create custom wedding websites, but she opposes same-sex marriage on religious grounds […]
Continue readingWhy Can’t We Make Women’s Equality the Law of the Land?
from NYTs Even if you are a political junkie, there’s a good chance you didn’t realize that the United States Constitution grew 58 words longer this week. Those words, which begin, “Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex,” are the text of the Equal Rights Amendment. Section 3 of the amendment states that it takes effect two years after its ratification, which happened on Jan. 27, 2020, when Virginia became the 38th state to sign on. By its own terms, then, the 28th […]
Continue readingAn Insider from the Purdue Pharma Bankruptcy Speaks Out
from The New Yorker One day last spring, Ryan Hampton had a secret meeting with David Sackler, whose family’s company, Purdue Pharma, stood accused of helping to precipitate the opioid crisis. Hampton was the co-chair of the Official Committee of Unsecured Creditors (U.C.C.), a powerful group that represented thousands of people and entities with claims against Purdue in what was then an ongoing bankruptcy proceeding. His job was to act as a sort of watchdog, and he had access to a trove of sensitive material that Purdue and the Sacklers were compelled to turn over in discovery. Hampton was also […]
Continue readingInitial Reaction to Eastman Memo
from The Election Law Blog My first thought on reading the Eastman memo revealed yesterday was that it could wait until I do the relevant work for a planned second edition of Ballot Battles before I reflect on it in earnest. But in light of some discussion that I’ve seen on Twitter, it might be helpful to share these preliminary thoughts: Setting aside the fundamental fact that the memo outlines a strategy to overturn enough valid electoral votes to keep Trump in power for a second term that he did not lawfully win (and therefore appropriately can be considered as […]
Continue readingDear Congress: Platform Accountability Should Not Threaten Online Expression
from ACLU Tomorrow, the Senate Commerce Committee is holding a hearing entitled “Does Section 230 Enable Big Tech Bad Behavior?” This is just the latest attempt by Congress and the Trump administration to amend, reinterpret, or eliminate Section 230, a key provision of federal law that generally ensures online platforms, including social media, can’t be held liable for the speech and content their users post on these platforms. This law means Yelp can’t be held legally responsible every time one of its users posts a false negative review. The Bed Bug Registry doesn’t have to visit every hotel with a […]
Continue readingAmy Coney Barrett’s Judicial Philosophy Doesn’t Hold Up to Scrutiny
from The Atlantic During her confirmation hearings, Amy Coney Barrett argued that the judicial philosophy known as “originalism” should guide judges in their interpretation and application of constitutional principles. Most famously associated with the late Justice Antonin Scalia (for whom Judge Barrett clerked), this idea sounds simple and sensible: In determining what the Constitution permits, a judge must first look to the plain meaning of the text, and if that isn’t clear, then apply what was in the minds of the 55 men who wrote it in 1787. Period. Anything else is “judicial lawmaking.” In some cases, interpreting the Constitution […]
Continue readingRuth Bader Ginsburg, Supreme Court’s Feminist Icon, Is Dead at 87
from NYTs Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the second woman to serve on the Supreme Court and a pioneering advocate for women’s rights, who in her ninth decade became a much younger generation’s unlikely cultural icon, died on Friday at her home in Washington. She was 87. More here.
Continue readingSupreme Court Rules Georgia Can’t Put The Law Behind A Paywall
from ars technica A narrowly divided US Supreme Court on Monday upheld the right to freely share the official law code of Georgia. The state claimed to own the copyright for the Official Code of Georgia Annotated and sued a nonprofit called Public.Resource.Org for publishing it online. Monday’s ruling is not only a victory for the open-government group, it’s an important precedent that will help secure the right to publish other legally significant public documents. “Officials empowered to speak with the force of law cannot be the authors of—and therefore cannot copyright—the works they create in the course of their official […]
Continue readingJustices To Consider Constitutionality Of CFPB Structure
from SCOTUSblog The congressional commission that investigated the 2008 financial crisis concluded that the United States’ consumer-protection system was “too fragmented to be effective.” In response to that finding, in 2010 Congress created the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau as part of the Dodd-Frank Act. The CFPB – whose website describes the bureau as a “U.S. government agency that makes sure banks, lenders, and other financial companies treat you fairly” – is led by one director appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate to serve a five-year term; once the director has been confirmed, the president can only remove […]
Continue reading