Democrats hoped this day would never come.
But it finally arrived.
And now Clarence Thomas is about to hit Democrats with some really bad news.
The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals handed down a landmark decision upholding a state of Texas law preventing social media companies from censoring users based on their political point of view.
The Texas law allows users to sue if social media companies censor them for their ideological beliefs or location.
“Today we reject the idea that corporations have a freewheeling First Amendment right to censor what people say,” Judge Andrew Oldham wrote for the majority.
Big Tech falsely claimed they are like newspapers who have every right to curate and moderate what speech they allow on their platforms.
“We reject the Platforms’ attempt to extract a freewheeling censorship right from the Constitution’s free speech guarantee. The Platforms are not newspapers. Their censorship is not speech,” Oldham added.
Judge Edith Jones concurred calling the claim that Big Tech is like a newspaper “ludicrous.”
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton celebrated the victory over Big Tech’s censorship regimes.
BREAKING: I just secured a MASSIVE VICTORY for the Constitution & Free Speech in fed court: #BigTech CANNOT censor the political voices of ANY Texan! The 5th Circuit “reject[s] the idea that corporations have a freewheeling First Amendment right to censor what people say. pic.twitter.com/UijlzYcv7r
— Attorney General Ken Paxton (@KenPaxtonTX) September 16, 2022
The tech monopolies that sued over the Texas law fumed over the decision.
“We remain convinced that when the U.S. Supreme Court hears one of our cases, it will uphold the First Amendment rights of websites, platforms, and apps,” NetChoice Vice President and General Counsel Carl Szabo wrote in a statement following Big Tech’s defeat.
“We strongly disagree with the court’s decision. Forcing private companies to give equal treatment to all viewpoints on their platforms places foreign propaganda and extremism on equal footing with decent Internet users, and places Americans at risk,” CCIA President Matt Schruers ranted.
Big Tech is angry for a very good reason.
The 11th Circuit Court of Appeals struck down a similar law in Florida.
When two circuit courts hand down conflicting opinions that puts a case on the fast track to the Supreme Court.
That spells trouble for Big Tech and the Democrats.
Justice Clarence Thomas authored a concurring opinion in April 2021 where Thomas argued that Big Tech companies were “common carriers” like phone and mail companies.
“A traditional telephone company laid physical wires to create a network connecting people,” Thomas stated. “Digital platforms lay information infrastructure that can be controlled in much the same way.”
The phone company can’t turn off your service because of your beliefs and the Postal Service can’t stop delivering your mail because of the content of your communications.
In 2020 Big Tech helped rig the election in Joe Biden’s favor by censoring the New York Post’s reporting on the contents of Hunter Biden’s laptop and emails that potentially implicated Joe Biden in corruption.
During the COVID pandemic Big Tech censored anyone that questioned if the virus leaked out of a lab in Communist China.
Lawsuits later showed that Facebook colluded with the Biden administration to censor an enemies list of individuals who pointed out the vaccines did not work as advertised.
Democrats hoping their homefield advantage of having ideological allies in Big Tech censor conservatives and control the flow of information to Americans come election season could be on the Supreme Court’s chopping block.
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