A Florida appeals court on has refused to stop the state attorney general’s lawsuit against Meta.
The lawsuit is the same one in which Attorney General James Uthmeier in October asked the court to make Meta implement age checks on all Floridian users.
The court of appeals was asked by Meta to quash the decision of a lower instance, Pasco County Circuit Judge Alicia Polk, who last year refused to dismiss the case in a brief order, finding that the complaint “sufficiently pleads the claims.”
Meta went to the appeals court to try and get the lawsuit dismissed, but the judges found that the question of “irreparable harm” was “dispositive” and that they therefore “do not reach the merits of the petition.”
In a footnote, the court said that nothing in its opinion should be taken as “in any way to constitute a comment on the merits of the Attorney General’s FDUTPA complaint or Meta’s claim of immunity from liability under section 230 or the First Amendment.”
The court did, however, address some of these issues, and ruled that Section 230 is a “limited statutory immunity” and “not absolute immunity from involvement in any type of lawsuit” – which means that a platform can be made to go through the whole legal process before this defense is tested.
As for the First Amendment, the court found that the lower instance judge’s decision “does not come close to infringing on Meta’s First Amendment rights” and that “none of Meta’s First Amendment rights have been altered” – since no injunction has been granted yet.
The court did quote a previous ruling that said First Amendment protections extend to “unnecessary litigation that chills speech” – and said that the burden of litigating was not enough to establish such a violation.
Meta argued that it has “the right to exercise editorial discretion over the third-party content provided on its platforms” and “the right to be free from government-compelled speech.”
In its petition, Meta said, “Just as Meta could not be held liable for alleged harm caused by a direct exercise of editorial discretion, Meta cannot be held liable for alleged harm caused by publication features that simply operationalize its editorial choices.”
The state of Florida said that its case is about Meta’s “own conduct” – namely, its design choices – and conceded that editorial control of third-party content is protected.
In October, Florida was asking the court to make Meta “Request proof of age for Instagram and Facebook accounts belonging to users that Meta’s systems know or predict to be under the age of 14, and mark for deletion the accounts of those who do not verify their age within 30 days.”
Another request was to “Treat users who Meta has reason to believe are under 14 or under 18 years of age as under those respective ages unless the users age verify.”
