Enlarge / The Supreme Court of the United States in Washington D.C. in May 2023. (credit: Getty Images | NurPhoto)

The US Supreme Court today heard oral arguments on Florida and Texas state laws that impose limits on how social media companies can moderate user-generated content.

The Florida law prohibits large social media sites like Facebook and Twitter (aka X) from banning politicians, and says they must "apply censorship, deplatforming, and shadow banning standards in a consistent manner among its users on the platform." The Texas statute prohibits large social media companies from moderating posts based on a user's "viewpoint." The laws were supported by Republican officials from 20 other states.

The tech industry says both laws violate the companies' First Amendment right to use editorial discretion in deciding what kinds of user-generated content to allow on their platforms, and how to present that content. The Supreme Court will decide whether the laws can be enforced while the industry lawsuits against Florida and Texas continue in lower courts.

Enlarge / Mifepristone (Mifeprex) and Misoprostol, the two drugs used in a medication abortion, are seen at the Women's Reproductive Clinic, which provides legal medication abortion services, in Santa Teresa, New Mexico, on June 17, 2022. (credit: Getty | Robyn Beck )

Scientific journal publisher Sage has retracted key abortion studies cited by anti-abortion groups in a legal case aiming to revoke regulatory approval of the abortion and miscarriage medication, mifepristone—a case that has reached the US Supreme Court , with a hearing scheduled for March 26.

On Monday, Sage announced the retraction of three studies, all published in the journal Health Services Research and Managerial Epidemiology. All three were led by James Studnicki, who works for The Charlotte Lozier Institute, a research arm of Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America. The publisher said the retractions were based on various problems related to the studies' methods, analyses, and presentation, as well as undisclosed conflicts of interest.

Two of the studies were cited by anti-abortion groups in their lawsuit against the Food and Drug Administration ( Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine v. FDA ), which claimed the regulator's approval and regulation of mifepristone was unlawful. The two studies were also cited by District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk in Texas, who issued a preliminary injunction last April to revoke the FDA's 2000 approval of mifepristone. A conservative panel of judges for the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans partially reversed that ruling months later , but the Supreme Court froze the lower court's order until the appeals process had concluded.

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images | OsakaWayne Studios)

Republican officials from 20 states, including 19 state attorneys general, are backing Florida and Texas in a Supreme Court battle over states' authority to regulate how social media firms moderate user-submitted content. The states on Monday submitted a brief arguing that they "have authority to prohibit mass communication platforms from censoring speech."

"The Federal Government knows it will be much more difficult for federal officials to induce social media companies to suppress speech if state law prohibits it," the Republican state officials wrote, pointing out that the US government previously submitted a brief opposing the state laws. The US opposition "shows that the Texas and Florida laws, far from infringing the First Amendment, in fact shield social media companies from government pressure and deprive government of the opportunity to control expression," the state officials wrote.

The Florida law would make it illegal for large social media sites like Facebook and Twitter to ban politicians, while the Texas law prohibits social media companies from moderating content based on a user's "viewpoint." NetChoice, a lobby group for tech companies, challenged both laws in court.

Enlarge (credit: Justin Sullivan / Staff | Getty Images North America )

On Monday, the Supreme Court declined to review an appeal from X (formerly Twitter), alleging that the US government's censorship of X transparency reports served as a prior restraint on the platform's speech and was unconstitutional.

This free speech battle predates Elon Musk's ownership of the platform. Since 2014, the social media company has "sought to accurately inform the public about the extent to which the US government is surveilling its users," X's petition said, while the government has spent years effectively blocking precise information from becoming public knowledge.

Current law requires that platforms instead only share generalized statistics regarding government information requests—using government-approved reporting bands such as "between 0 and 99 times"—so that people posing as national security threats can never gauge exactly how active the feds are on any given platform.

Enlarge / Elon Musk at an AI event with Britain Prime Minister Rishi Sunak in London on Thursday, Nov. 2, 2023. (credit: Getty Images | WPA Pool )

Elon Musk yesterday appealed to the Supreme Court in a last-ditch effort to terminate his settlement with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Musk has claimed he was coerced into the deal with the SEC and that it violates his free speech rights, but the settlement has been upheld by every court that's reviewed it so far.

In his petition asking the Supreme Court to hear the case, Musk said the SEC settlement forced him to "waive his First Amendment rights to speak on matters ranging far beyond the charged violations."

The SEC case began after Musk's August 2018 tweets stating, "Am considering taking Tesla private at $420. Funding secured" and "Investor support is confirmed. Only reason why this is not certain is that it's contingent on a shareholder vote." The SEC sued Musk and Tesla, saying the tweets were false and "led to significant market disruption."

Enlarge / US President Joe Biden during a meeting in the Cabinet Room of the White House on Friday, Oct. 20, 2023. (credit: Getty Images | Bloomberg)

The Supreme Court has blocked an injunction that would prevent the Biden administration from pressuring social media firms to take down content. Justices agreed to hear the Biden administration's appeal of the injunction, which will be stayed until the high court issues a ruling that could either uphold the injunction or block it permanently.

The decision to grant the stay and hear the administration's appeal was issued in an order Friday . The court previously issued a temporary stay while it considered whether to hear the case, so the injunction has not been enforced.

Justices Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas, and Neil Gorsuch dissented, arguing that the stay "allows the defendants to persist in committing the type of First Amendment violations that the lower courts identified. The majority takes this action in the face of the lower courts' detailed findings of fact."

Enlarge (credit: Pitiphothivichit | iStock / Getty Images Plus )

On Friday, the Supreme Court agreed to decide if two laws crafted by Republicans in Florida and Texas run afoul of the First Amendment because the laws force platforms to explain all their content moderation decisions to users.

Both laws, passed in 2021 after several major platforms banned Donald Trump, seemingly were a way for Republicans to fight back and prevent supposedly liberal-leaning platforms from allegedly censoring conservative viewpoints.

The laws are designed to stop the most popular platforms from inconsistently censoring content by requiring platforms to provide detailed explanations to users whenever their posts are removed or their accounts are banned or "shadowbanned" (deprioritized or restricted from feeds by platforms' algorithms). The Texas law also requires platforms to provide clear paths to timely appeal censored content, and both laws require platforms to publicly disclose standards for when and why they censor users.

Enlarge / The Supreme Court. (credit: Getty Images | Douglas Rissing)

The Supreme Court on Friday extended a stay of a lower-court order that would limit the Biden administration's contacts with social media firms, giving justices a few more days to consider whether to block the ruling entirely. The court could rule by the middle of this week on the Biden administration motion in a case in which the states of Missouri and Louisiana allege that speech related to COVID-19 and other topics was illegally suppressed at the behest of government officials.

A stay issued September 14 was scheduled to expire on Friday, but Justice Samuel Alito ordered that it be extended until Wednesday, September 27, at 11:59 pm ET. Alito is the justice assigned to the 5th Circuit, the circuit in which an appeals court ruled that the White House and FBI likely violated the First Amendment by coercing social media platforms into moderating content and changing their moderation policies.

The 5th Circuit appeals court ruling wasn't a total loss for the Biden administration. Appeals court judges threw out the majority of a district judge's preliminary injunction that ordered the Biden administration to halt a wide range of communications with social media companies.