NYT:

A federal appeals court on Friday reversed a lower court’s order blocking a Texas law that stops large social media platforms from removing political posts, a blow for tech companies that say their content moderation decisions are protected by the Constitution.

“Today we reject the idea that corporations have a freewheeling First Amendment right to censor what people say,” Judge Andrew S. Oldham of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, which is known to be conservative, said in the court’s ruling. One member of the three-judge panel dissented from portions of the ruling.

The law makes it possible for individuals or the Texas attorney general’s office to sue social media platforms with more than 50 million monthly users in the United States for taking down political viewpoints. The legislation is the product of conservative anger over posts that were taken down largely because they had violated the social media platforms’ rules.

It comes as platforms like Facebook, YouTube and Twitter face immense political pressure over their decisions to take down content they deem misinformation, or view as hateful or violent. Republicans have generally called for the platforms to leave up more posts, while Democrats have urged them to be more aggressive in removing some content.

Mike Masnick at TechDirt:

5th Circuit Rewrites A Century Of 1st Amendment Law To Argue Internet Companies Have No Right To Moderate

As far as I can tell, in the area the 5th Circuit appeals court has jurisdiction, websites no longer have any 1st Amendment editorial rights. That’s the result of what appears to me to be the single dumbest court ruling I’ve seen in a long, long time, and I know we’ve seen some crazy rulings of late. However, thanks to judge Andy Oldham, internet companies no longer have 1st Amendment rights regarding their editorial decision making….

It is difficult to state how completely disconnected from reality this ruling is, and how dangerously incoherent it is. It effectively says that companies no longer have a 1st Amendment right to their own editorial policies. Under this ruling, any state in the 5th Circuit could, in theory, mandate that news organizations must cover certain politicians or certain other content. It could, in theory, allow a state to mandate that any news organization must publish opinion pieces by politicians. It completely flies in the face of the 1st Amendment’s association rights and the right to editorial discretion.

There’s going to be plenty to say about this ruling, which will go down in the annals of history as a complete embarrassment to the judiciary, but let’s hit the lowest points. The crux of the ruling, written by Judge Andy Oldham, is as follows:

“Today we reject the idea that corporations have a freewheeling First Amendment right to censor what people say. Because the district court held otherwise, we reverse its injunction and remand for further proceedings.“

Considering just how long Republicans (and Oldham was a Republican political operative before being appointed to the bench) have spent insisting that corporations have 1st Amendment rights, this is a major turnaround, and (as noted) an incomprehensible one. Frankly, Oldham’s arguments sound much more like the arguments made by ignorant trolls in our comments than anyone with any knowledge or experience with 1st Amendment law.