❓WHAT HAPPENED: Elon Musk’s X Corp. has filed a federal lawsuit challenging a New York law requiring social media companies to disclose how they define and moderate politically sensitive content categories.
👤WHO WAS INVOLVED: X Corp., New York Attorney General Letitia James, and New York lawmakers.
📍WHEN & WHERE: The lawsuit was filed in the Southern District of New York following the law’s enactment.
💬KEY QUOTE: “The First Amendment protects both the right to speak freely and the right to refrain from speaking at all,” the complaint emphasizes.
🎯IMPACT: The lawsuit seeks to prevent enforcement of the law, citing allegedly unconstitutional compelled speech and government overreach.
X Corp., the company behind Elon Musk’s social media platform X, has filed a federal lawsuit challenging a New York law that mandates social media companies publicly disclose how they define and moderate politically sensitive content categories such as “hate speech,” “misinformation,” and “extremism.”
The complaint, filed in the Southern District of New York, targets Senate Bill S895B, which X Corp. argues is an unconstitutional intrusion into editorial freedom. The law, the company contends, is “an impermissible attempt by the State to inject itself into the content-moderation editorial process.”
Key to the lawsuit is the “Content Category Report Provisions,” which compel platforms to disclose whether, and how, they moderate categories of speech. Non-compliance could result in daily fines of up to $15,000 and lawsuits from the New York Attorney General, Letitia James (D). X Corp. asserts that the law violates both the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution and Article I, Section 8, of the New York Constitution.
The lawsuit also highlights a similar California statute that X successfully challenged, where the Ninth Circuit ruled that such disclosure mandates likely compel non-commercial speech and fail strict scrutiny. “The government cannot do indirectly what [it] is barred from doing directly,” the complaint states, referencing U.S. Supreme Court precedent.
X Corp. is asking the court to declare the law unconstitutional, enjoin its enforcement, and award legal fees. “The Content Category Report provisions compel every covered social media company to reveal its policy opinion about contentious issues, such as what constitutes hate speech or misinformation and whether to moderate such expression,” the company complains.
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