After settling a lawsuit from Elon Musk’s X Corp., California can no longer enforce key provisions of the state’s social media censorship law.
The law requires social media companies to disclose details about their content moderation practices.
However, California’s Democrat Attorney General Rob Bonta has now been forced to gut the law by removing key provisions from it.
Bonta and Musk’s X Corp. finalized the agreement in federal court Monday.
The settlement bans the state from enforcing certain reporting mandates under Assembly Bill 587 (AB 587).
AB 587 is a 2022 law that sought to compel platforms to publicize their protocols for handling what the Democrat-led bill calls “hate speech,” “extremism,” “disinformation” or “foreign political influence.”
The bill was part of an effort to strongarm social media companies, in particular Musk’s pro-free speech platform X, into censoring their users.
The court sided with Musk’s argument that the law violates the First Amendment.
U.S. District Judge William Shubb also ordered California to pay Musk’s company $345,576 in legal fees.
“It is hereby declared that subdivisions (a)(3), (a)(4)(A), and (a)(5) of California Business and Professions Code section 22677 violate the First Amendment of the United States Constitution facially and as applied to Plaintiff,” Shubb wrote.
However, the settlement did not overturn the law entirely, which was the goal of Musk’s lawsuit.
The lawsuit, filed by X Corp in 2023, challenged the measure on First Amendment grounds.
Nevertheless, the settlement diminishes the law’s reach by eliminating requirements for companies to submit detailed enforcement reports to the state.
Platforms must still publicly disclose their content moderation policies, but they are no longer obligated to report how often they flag or remove content within the law’s specified categories.
AB 587 was ignited by California’s Democrat Governor Gavin Newsom in 2022.
The law was framed as a transparency measure to hold Silicon Valley companies accountable for their handling of content considered harmful.
Critics, including X Corp., argued the law amounted to unconstitutional government interference in online speech by compelling companies to justify their moderation decisions to the state.
The law was widely considered an attack against Musk’s free speech agenda.
The settlement follows a September ruling from the Ninth Circuit of Appeals, which found that the law’s reporting mandates likely compelled speech in violation of the First Amendment.
In that opinion, the court ruled that AB 587 improperly forced platforms to take a public stance on politically charged topics.
“In effect, 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 opinion reads.
Social media companies are still required to submit twice-yearly reports notifying state officials of any changes in content moderation policy under what remains of the law.
California officials have not yet indicated whether they will pursue new legislation to replace the scrapped provisions.
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