Headed for the Supreme Court
So far, the only thing clear about state efforts to regulate the content of social media websites is that judges are divided on what to do about it.
The U.S. Supreme Court by a 5-4 vote stopped a Texas law on social media from taking effect while a case works its way through the courts. That overruled a 2-1 decision by a federal appeals court to let the Texas law take effect — which in turn had overruled a U.S. district judge’s injunction against the law.
Meanwhile, in a separate case based on a Florida social media content law, a different federal appeals court ruled 3-0 that the Sunshine State’s action was a violation of the First Amendment. The ruling included a 67-page document explaining the reasoning.
This court ruled, according to The Washington Post, “that social media companies’ efforts to curate the content of their platforms was speech that the government could not control.”
Laws with two different rulings from two appeals courts is a case that’s tailor-made for the Supreme Court. If the Texas and Florida laws wade into the area of requiring a balance of political opinions on social media, or preventing commentary from being removed based on a writer’s political beliefs, that seems likely to be struck down by the First Amendment’s freedom of speech protections.
Critics of big social media companies like Facebook and Twitter say they are more likely to remove conservative opinions. This belief is what led Texas and Florida, two states run by conservatives, to pass their regulatory laws.
It’s impossible to see how these laws stand up to constitutional scrutiny. First of all, if it’s true that conservative opinions are more likely to be censored, there’s still plenty of conservative commentary on Facebook.
Second, the First Amendment rights in question do not belong to the people posting on social media. The rights belong directly to the social media companies themselves, which own the platforms. They are allowed to decide what goes on their site and what doesn’t.
Finally, if the Supreme Court did apply content restrictions to social media, it would have to explain why these limits also would not apply to TV stations, newspapers and other forms of communication that clearly have the right to decide what they publish, free of any dictates from the government. If, for example, a newspaper prints a letter to the editor that’s critical of local government, will it then be required to print one that’s complimentary?
Fairness in presenting different opinions is appreciated and respected. But it is certainly not required. Does anybody seriously think that CNN, MSNBC or Fox News devote the same amount of time to “both sides?” Will former President Donald Trump’s new website, Truth Social, be fair with the opinions it publishes about the results of the 2020 election?
These laws in Texas and Florida are a smokescreen, distracting attention from the true problem with social media sites. And that is: Congress has given internet companies a financial incentive to distribute extreme content because federal law says these companies are not legally responsible for anything their customers post online.
It is human nature to be attracted to the dramatic, the scandalous and the controversial. Sites like Facebook, with billions of users, make their money from selling advertising. And they sell more ads and make more money when controversial commentary gets the widest possible attention.
If governments want to turn down the shrill volume of social media, just make the companies liable for what appears on their sites — same as all other media companies. A few words added to or removed from Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act is all that’s needed.
Jack Ryan, Enterprise-Journal
A real threat to
election integrity
In recent political history, the Republican Party appears to have been much better at strategizing than Democrats.
While Democrats have generally focused on the big-ticket offices — the president, governors and members of Congress — Republicans figured out that the way to assure political power over the long haul is to focus on contests further down the ballot.
In recent times, they have targeted state legislative races because in many states, such as Mississippi, the legislature draws the voting boundaries from which members of Congress and the state legislators themselves are elected. Since the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that there is nothing unconstitutional about drawing election boundaries to give one political party a greater shot at winning, the Republican advantage from redistricting is now so entrenched in some states that it’s hard to see how Democrats will ever be able to flip them back. The strategy has nearly guaranteed Republicans that even when they are in the minority in Congress, their disadvantage will never be so large that they can’t block legislation they oppose.
Recently, conservative syndicated columnist Mona Charen wrote about a more pernicious movement within the Republican Party — or more accurately a powerful faction within the Republican Party — that could further tilt the balance of power toward the GOP and undermine democracy in the process.
Democrats better be paying attention.
Following the 2020 presidential election, Donald Trump attempted to overturn his defeat by pressuring state and local election officials to cooperate in a false narrative about widespread voter fraud. That didn’t work, so now the former president and his supporters are busy backing “election deniers” for state office who could be helpful the next time there’s a closely contested presidential race.
According to Charen’s column, written before several states held party primaries last month, at least 23 candidates who falsely claim the presidency was stolen from Trump had qualified to run for secretary of state in 19 states. Fifty-three election deniers were seeking governorships in 25 states, and 13 were running for attorney general in 13 states. All three of these positions — secretary of state, governor and attorney general — play critical roles in the oversight of the vote-counting and in challenges to it. The former president has been actively involved in endorsing many of these election deniers, “the only time in history that a former president has bestirred himself over races so far down the ballot,” wrote Charen.
“Additionally,” said the columnist, “death threats and intimidation from MAGA (Make America Great Again) extremists have caused one in five election administrators to leave their posts before 2024.”
The early results of Trump’s efforts have been mixed, as illustrated in two states that he narrowly lost in 2020. The GOP nomination in the Pennsylvania governor’s race went to a big-time election denier, Doug Mastriano, while in Georgia, two Republican incumbents who refused to cave to Trump’s pressure, Gov. Brian Kemp and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, handily won their party’s nomination.
The battle is far from over, however. If Trump and his acolytes are successful, it could endanger the integrity of every close election. All it takes to steal an election is to have those counting the votes predisposed as to who the winner is going to be.
Tim Kalich
Editor and Publisher
Greenwood Commonwealth
