On Monday, Solicitor General of the United States Elizabeth Prelogar filed a brief with the Supreme Court, urging the Court to grant cert to cases against Texas’s and Florida’s anti-content moderation laws. Both laws prohibit social media platforms from removing, downranking, or banning certain content and users, and require platforms to explain their content moderation decisions. 

Representing the Biden Administration, the Solicitor General’s Brief said, “On the merits, the Court should affirm the Eleventh Circuit and reverse the Fifth Circuit: the platforms’ content-moderation activities are protected by the First Amendment, and the content-moderation and individualized-explanation requirements impermissably burden those protected activities.” (page 12)

“It’s great to see the Biden Administration back the right to moderate content online,” said Chamber of Progress Legal Advocacy Counsel Jess Miers. “Most users don’t want social media feeds full of hate speech and conspiracy theories, but that’s what the Texas and Florida laws require platforms to host. The right to free speech is also a right protecting us from compelled speech, preventing state governments in Texas and Florida from forcing platforms to host content they disagree with.”

In both the Texas case and Florida case, Chamber of Progress has led a coalition of tech and civil society groups in amicus briefs urging the Fifth and Eleventh Circuit Courts to overturn the anti-content moderation laws.

While the Solicitor General argues that both laws’ anti-content moderation provisions violate the First Amendment, the brief contends that the laws’ general disclosure requirements do not. In our own amicus briefs, Chamber of Progress argues that the disclosure requirements also represent a form of compelled speech.

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Chamber of Progress (progresschamber.org) is a center-left tech industry policy coalition promoting technology’s progressive future.  We work to ensure that all Americans benefit from technological leaps, and that the tech industry operates responsibly and fairly.  

Our corporate partners do not have a vote on or veto over our positions. We do not speak for individual partner companies and remain true to our stated principles even when our partners disagree.