X Wins Appeal

Elon Musk’s social media platform, X Corp., succeeded in an appeal to partially block a California law (AB 587) mandating social media giants to disclose their strategies for dealing with disinformation, harassment, hate speech, and extremism. Read the ruling here: X Corp v Bonta 20240904

Ninth Circuit Ruling

A 3-judge panel at the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco reversed a prior ruling by a lower court judge who had refused to halt the law’s enforcement.

This California legislation compels large-scale social media entities to publish annual reports detailing their methods for moderating content, along with statistics on the volume of posts deemed objectionable and the actions taken against them.

Last year, X Corp., under Musk’s leadership, initiated legal action against this legislation, arguing that it infringed on free speech rights safeguarded by the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

The lower Court, U.S. District Judge William Shubb in Sacramento had dismissed X Corp.’s request to block the law, deeming it not excessively restrictive in the context of First Amendment jurisprudence.

The 9th Circuit disagreed, finding the law’s demands on transparency in content moderation “more extensive than necessary”.

The appeals panel has mandated the lower court to reconsider whether the law’s content moderation requirements could be separated from its other elements, allowing for a more targeted application or modification of the law.

Elon Musk Files a Lawsuit Today

This just in! Elon Musk filed a lawsuit to challege AB 587 today. (9/8/2023)

Attached is the lawsuit: X Corp v. Bonta Complaint for Declaratory Relief.

First paragraph of the Complaint:

“AB 587 also violates the First Amendment because it has the purpose and intended chilling effect of pressuring social media companies into limiting or censoring constitutionally-protected content that the State finds objectionable. AB 587 would also impermissibly inject the government into X Corp.’s editorial judgments — e.g., by dictating the contents of X Corp.’s Terms of Service and compelling controversial disclosures about how X Corp. moderates content on its platform as part of an effort to pressure social media companies to regulate content in a manner desired by the State, as opposed to allowing the social media companies to regulate content on their platforms as they deem fit.”

Babylon Bee Also Previously Filed Lawsuit Challenging AB 587

He joins previous others who have sued, like Seth Dillon of Babylon Bee and Tim Pools.

See Babylon Bee, Minds v. Bonta Complaint for Declaratory Relief here. I highly recommend reading this amusing piece of legal writing. I love the first 2 sentences:

1. In 2013, then-Lieutenant Governor Gavin Newsom wrote about the importance of the flow of information in the Internet age. “We no longer live in a world where Walter Cronkite is the single voice of news for all Americans,” he wrote. Gavin Newsom, Citizenville: How to Take the Town Square Digital and Reinvent Government, at 38 (2013). “Today people get their news, information, and opinions from thousands of different sources—Websites, blogs, cable channels, Twitter feeds . . . .That’s not going to change, nor should it. But we have to strive toward making sure that raw information is available to everyone, so people can make their own decisions.” Id. Newsom even criticized dominant Big Tech firms, including Google and Facebook, for denying “those who do want to hear all sides” the chance to listen to other views. Id. at 37. Citing the potential of technology to challenge political power, Newsom observed that “[t]hose in authority may not like it, but this is the wave of the future, and they’re going to have to deal with it.” Id. at 35.

2. While Governor Newsom appears to have abandoned this view, Supreme Court precedent
still recognizes that “[w]hile in the past there may have been difficulty in identifying the most important
places (in a spatial sense) for the exchange of views, today the answer is clear. It is cyberspace—the ‘vast democratic forums of the Internet’ in general, and social media in particular.” Packingham v. North Carolina (quoting Reno v. American Civil Liberties Union, 521 U. S. 844, 868 (1997)). With Governor
Newsom’s approval, California’s AB 587 coerces social media companies into restricting various forms
of constitutionally protected speech from “vast democratic forums” of the Internet—precisely the
opposite of “deal[ing] with it.”