The US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit has granted a partial preliminary injunction in the X Corp. v. Bonta case, which concerns some provisions from California’s online censorship (“moderation”) law, AB 587.
In explaining the ruling, the court said that X Corp. is “likely to succeed in showing that the Content Category Report provisions facially violate the First Amendment.”
The law, introduced by 10 Democrats and one Republican in the state legislature and later adopted, mandates that large social media companies must report to California’s attorney-general regarding the details of their “moderation” apparatus. These companies are required to submit “Content Category Reports” twice a year.
The reports should include statements regarding whether the companies’ terms of service define hate speech or racism, extremism or radicalization, disinformation or misinformation, harassment, and foreign political interference; if that is the case, the authorities want to know what those definitions are.
The irony of many laws dealing with the same subjects failing to properly define these categories aside, but the court of appeals judges found that this was one of the provisions that likely violated the First Amendment, therefore granting an injunction against it, and several other portions of AB 587 (under section 22677).
Another part of the law that saw the same fate relates to large social media platforms submitting a detailed description of their “moderation policies, and information about flagged content” when it comes to the same categories of speech (hate speech, racism, etc.)
The Ninth Circuit in this way reversed a previous decision by a district court not to grant a preliminary injunction – which is a temporary block until the courts decide on the merits of the case.
We obtained a copy of the opinion for you here.
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