A Chink in Big Tech's Armor
By Adam Candeub & Rachel Bovard
May 19, 2022
https://www.realclearpolicy.com/articles...mor_833161.html


Late last week, the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals proved a common sense but rarely actionable premise: the Big Tech companies, despite their claims to the contrary, do not have a divine right to rule in America. The laws — and the democratically elected lawmakers who write them – get first consideration.

Big Tech has run straight into a Texas-shaped brick wall in the form of a law passed by the state legislature last year aimed at preventing social media censorship of users for their viewpoints. The 5th Circuit hasn’t made a final ruling on the merits of the law, but has allowed the law to go into effect while the legal process moves forward.

The Texas’ law, HB 20, reaffirms a basic American legal principle. While Big Tech foams and froths about how they are “private businesses” who get to do “whatever they want under the First Amendment,” the reality of our laws is that some companies, given their scale and the role they play in facilitating access to speech and commerce, cannot. Phone companies, airlines, restaurants, schools, and hotels, among other types of business, are legally required to treat all people equally whether they are white or black, Christian or Muslim, Democrat or Republican.

Big Tech, of course, huffily declares the opposite. In fact, in front of the 5th Circuit, NetChoice, Big Tech’s trade association, argued that their member companies could, in fact, ban all LGBTQ speech if they so choose. Overt discrimination against their users, they claim, is central to the First Amendment protected speech of the companies.

Rather than wait for the 5th Circuit to decide this case, however, the tech platforms have made an “emergency application” to Justice Samuel Alito at the Supreme Court. These type of applications, part of the Court’s so-called “shadow docket,” are usually reserved for the most dramatic of situations, such as stays of execution.

In justifying such an extraordinary action, the platforms claim a parade of exaggerated horribles if the Texas law is allowed to take effect: They will be forced to change “all of our systems” to comply, and that they’ll lose business after advertisers pull out due to the objectionable conduct the platforms will be forced to host. To that point, they falsely contend that the Texas law would require platforms to carry and transmit unlawful speech, pornography, spam, and material harmful to children.-- excerpt, rest at link above --