Supreme Court Blocks Texas From Enforcing Social Media Law – Opinion

This being a holiday week, the Supreme Court didn’t hand down any substantive opinions Tuesday. They did, however, issue an Order Tuesday afternoon granting the application of two tech industry groups to vacate a stay put in place by the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals of the U.S. District Court’s preliminary injunction which prevented Texas’ recent social media law from taking effect.

That’s a lot of procedural information to unpack. The HB 20 law, which prohibits large tech companies with more than 50 million monthly users from restricting or blocking users or postings based on their political views, was signed by the Texas governor in September 2021. NetChoice and the Computer & Communications Industry Association filed suit challenging the law on First Amendment grounds.

The U.S. District Court, Western District of Texas Judge Robert Pitman granted a preliminary order preventing Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s enforcement of Texas law against these two groups and their members in December. Texas appealed the case to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals and requested a stay of the District Court’s Order pending resolution of the case on the merits. The Fifth Circuit approved this request in May and the Texas law was allowed to take effect.

The tech groups then filed an application with the Supreme Court asking that the Court vacate the Fifth Circuit’s stay of the District Court’s Order (the preliminary injunction), and the Court granted that application, meaning the preliminary injunction goes back into effect, and the law cannot be implemented while the merits of the law are litigated.

All of these factors have the net result that law remains in a holding position while constitutionality issues are resolved in lower courts. Most likely, the Supreme Court will ultimately review the law on its merits. The law won’t be implemented while it is being determined.

While the Court’s Order itself is quite brief (five lines), Justice Alito filed a formal, six-page dissent, in which Justice Thomas and Justice Gorsuch joined. While Justice Kagan did not join the Court’s Order, she indicated that she would also deny the application. This allowed the law to take effect until the merits of the case are decided. Justices who were part of the majority included Justice Kavanaugh and Justice Sotomayor as well Justice Coney Barrett and Justice Breyer.

Here’s the court’s brief order blocking Texas from implementing the law for now, with a six-page dissent from Alito: https://t.co/nb2YE3JWJX

It is important to note that Kagan didn’t sign on to Alito’s dissent although she stated that she would allow the law into effect.

— SCOTUSblog (@SCOTUSblog) May 31, 2022