Supreme Court Punts on Florida and Texas Social Media Laws, Sends Cases Back to Lower Courts

The Supreme Court on July 1 sent legal challenges to laws in Florida and Texas that regulate how social media platforms moderate content back to lower courts, finding that they failed to carry out proper analyses of the two cases. The court’s unanimous decision was written by Justice Elena Kagan. Despite the 9-0 vote on the judgment, not all justices agreed with the reasoning behind it. This was the first time the nation’s highest court had reviewed state laws that deem social media companies “common carriers,” a status that might allow states to impose utility-style regulations on platforms and forbid them from discriminating against users based on their political viewpoints....