Julia Nikhinson/Reuters
Washington (CNN) Social media companies should be treated like public utilities like telephone or telegraph companies, a group of states led by Republican attorneys general told the US Supreme Court on Monday.
In a friend-of-the-court brief, 19 states and the Arizona state legislature wrote that the Supreme Court should uphold laws passed by Texas and Florida that restrict companies like Meta, YouTube, X and others from moderating the content their users post on line.
Challenged state laws forcing social media companies to disseminate all online speech are constitutional because the tech platforms enjoy a "hyperconcentration" of economic power, the group argued.
He brief reflects broad conservative support for laws that have been billed as โanti-censorshipโ but that, according to the tech industry, violate the First Amendment rights of social media companies to run their own private spaces.
He high risk case could determine the future of social media moderation and online political speech and is expected to move to an oral debate next month. The case could have implications for the publications that people and institutions make on social networks during this presidential election cycle.
In their brief, the states noted โstriking similarities between social media companies and the telegraph and telephones,โ and that those similarities justify strict new rules prohibiting discrimination based on political views.
The question for the court, the states wrote, is โwhether companies like Facebook are more like newspapers, parade organizers, bakers, and website designers, or more like telephones, telegraphs, schools, and shopping malls.โ
The brief also argues that the rules are necessary because dominant social media companies are "entrenched" and using their "unprecedented power to censor keynote speakers on important issues in public debate."
Technological platforms have discussed for a long time that their services are politically neutral and that their content moderation practices reflect the private policies they have established to combat spam, fraud, incitement, misinformation or other evils that companies choose not to host.
Some Legal experts have warned that the breadth of state laws makes it nearly impossible to comply with them without also unleashing a torrent of spam, adult content, or other objectionable material on platforms that companies can currently freely moderate.
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