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Supreme Court to decide if tech companies can censor what you post on the internet
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The Supreme Court is set to hear arguments in the most significant free speech case since the 1960s on Monday, Feb. 26. The dispute comes down to one question: Do Big Tech companies have a constitutional right to censor other people?
The court will hear two connected free speech cases. The broader of the two, NetChoice v Paxton, stems from a challenge of the Texas law which protects its residents from Big Tech censorship. The other important case, Moody v NetChoice, was also brought by Big Tech to challenge a Florida law which prohibits Big Tech censorship of political figures.
The Media Research Center has now documented more than 6,400 cases of censorship by firms such as Amazon, Google/YouTube, and Meta — including the egregious suppression of the New York Post Biden laptop story ahead of the 2020 election. To protect Texans from Big Tech’s abuses of power, Texas enacted a new “common carrier law.”
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Common carriership is a longstanding legal concept for private companies which hold themselves out as “open to the public” and also control access to other markets. Common carrier laws have existed for centuries, covering utilities, telecommunications firms and railroads.
Many believe Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas helped set in motion the challenge to Big Tech censorship with comments he made. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images)
A common carrier is forbidden from denying service to or discriminating against its customers. While it was already broadly understood this category included large social media platforms, Texas eliminated any doubt by explicitly classifying them as such.
Under its trade association NetChoice, Big Tech has advanced a profoundly silly argument for why courts should block the Texas law. Big Tech claims that, by barring social media platforms from subjectively banning users, Texas is compelling the platforms “to speak” against their will.
Big Tech now begs the court to create a constitutional right to censor, immunizing discrimination —- a right that would apply even if a platform’s stated goal was to manipulate elections or target people by race and religion.
If courts accept Big Tech’s arguments, it would mean that notoriously anti-Israel Google could have an unlimited constitutional right to ban Jewish Americans from posting videos on YouTube. If this sounds far-fetched, keep in mind that Facebook has already banned several Punjabi-American Sikhs from the platform specifically because of their racial and religious identity.
To be clear, any of the Big Tech firms covered by the Texas law can choose to stop being common carriers whenever they like. All they would have to do is say that they are publishers, no different than newspaper or book editors and entirely protected by the First Amendment. Being a publisher, though, means accepting liability for the content on their sites.
Of course, platforms like YouTube and Facebook know many of their users are uploading defamatory, fraudulent and even violent content, and they do not want to face any responsibility for that. Therefore, instead of choosing to be publishers, they are asking activist judges to let them enjoy all the benefits of being a common carrier (total immunity for customers’ conduct) while avoiding any of the responsibility (the obligation not to discriminate).
The Fifth Circuit rightly rejected Big Tech’s laughable argument, saying that it was “staggering” for “platforms [to] argue that buried somewhere in the person’s enumerated right to free speech lies a corporation’s unenumerated right to muzzle speech.” Nevertheless, there is a genuine danger that the Supreme Court will side with Big Tech and rewrite the Constitution to enshrine censorship.
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One justice who is unlikely to join in such an effort is Justice Clarence Thomas. Many believe the Texas law was, in part, inspired by an opinion he wrote in 2021, where he remarked that “[i]n many ways, digital platforms that hold themselves out to the public resemble traditional common carriers” because they “are at bottom communications networks, and they ‘carry’ information from one user to another.”
The New York Post’s bombshell reporting during the 2020 presidential election was one of many topics heavily censored by Big Tech. (Getty images | New York Post)
Justice Elena Kagan, an appointee of then-President Barack Obama, joined Thomas in contending (unsuccessfully) that the Texas law should have remained in place while the court decides its fate. A justice is unlikely to allow a law to go into effect if she believes that, on appeal, it will be ruled unconstitutional.
While Kagan may surprise court observers by siding with Texans’ free speech rights, Justice Brett Kavanaugh remains an enigma. When he was a circuit court judge, Kavanaugh claimed some common carriers possess “editorial discretion” to censor in violation of federal law. If Kavanaugh still believes in this invisible “editorial discretion” loophole to duly enacted civil rights statutes, then he could well side with Big Tech against free speech.
If Kavanaugh and four other justices take this drastic step, the ramifications for America will be devastating. Only once in history has the Supreme Court limited a common carrier law. That was in the now discredited Plessy v. Ferguson case, where the Supreme Court allowed a railroad to deny service to a Black man.
Choosing to uphold Texas’s free speech law ought not to be difficult for the Supreme Court. Centuries of precedent reiterate that Americans’ fundamental liberties can be protected with common carrier laws. It would be much better for the justices to follow these rulings rather than create a new constitutional right for the world’s largest corporations to discriminate.
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Tim Kilcullen is counsel for investigations at the Media Research Center.
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The family of Brianna Aguilera, the Texas A&M student who fell to her death from a high-rise apartment in November, is suing two organizations for allegedly overserving alcohol ahead of the 19-year-old’s death.
Attorney Tony Buzbee on Tuesday announced a $1 million wrongful death lawsuit was filed in Travis County against the Austin Blacks Rugby Club and the UT Economics and Business Association.
“It is illegal to serve minors any amount of alcohol in the State of Texas. It is reckless and irresponsible to grossly over-serve a group of minors at a University of Texas football tailgate to the point where those minors lose their physical faculties and ability to control themselves,” the lawsuit states.
Aguilera died when she fell from an Austin high-rise apartment following a Texas A&M vs. University of Texas football tailgate at around 1 a.m. Nov. 29, according to police.
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An image provided by the family of the young Texas A&M student, Brianna Aguilera, found dead in Austin over the weekend. (GoFundMe)
A police investigation later determined Aguilera died by suicide despite her family’s claims that she was killed.
Brianna Aguilera was found dead in an apartment hours after attending a tailgate party. (Facebook/Brie Aguilera)
According to the filing, the alleged “egregious over-serving of minors” led to Aguilera’s death. Witnesses described her behavior over several hours as “shifting from upbeat to disoriented and ultimately grossly intoxicated,” the suit says.
Brianna Aguilera holds a sign congratulating her on her acceptance to Texas A&M. (Instagram/brie.aguilera)
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Buzbee said the lawsuit is also intended to support the ongoing investigation into the events of that night by allowing the firm to seek phone and text records, documents and data and to compel witness testimony.
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The lawsuit requests a jury trial.
Fox News Digital’s Julia Bonavita contributed to this report.
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Nobody handles oil quite like Texas and a fresh supply of Venezuelan crude could soon be headed to the Lone Star State’s coast.
The first barrels of thick, tar-like crude could arrive as soon as next week at ports across Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi, where dense clusters of refineries are built and bred to process heavy oil.
The development follows President Donald Trump’s Tuesday evening announcement that Caracas will transfer up to 50 million barrels of oil to the U.S., worth about $2.8 billion at current market prices.
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Venezuelan children swimming near an oil tanker docked at a pier near the refinery of the state oil company PDVSA. (Jesus Vargas/picture alliance/Getty Images)
“The Gulf Coast concentrates most of our refining capacity, and those refineries were built or revamped over the years to process extra-heavy crude similar to what is produced in Venezuela,” explained Jaime Brito, executive director of refining and oil products at OPIS.
“From a market perspective, additional volumes of extra-heavy crude entering the U.S. refining system would be an extraordinarily positive development,” Brito said. “It would allow refiners to operate more efficiently, something they haven’t been able to do for years and could help keep gasoline and diesel prices at better levels because refiners would have access to cheaper crude and more optimal operations.”
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He added that tankers could arrive within five to six days if they leave Venezuelan waters on Thursday.
Because Gulf Coast refineries supply a large share of the nation’s fuel, shifts in how efficiently they operate can ultimately ripple through to prices paid by U.S. consumers.
Texas oil refineries are poised to benefit from additional crude oil supplies. (Brandon Bell/Getty Images)
The arrival of 15 to 25 oil tankers carrying up to 50 million barrels of crude is only a fraction of what Venezuela could ultimately supply.
With more than 300 billion barrels of proven reserves, it holds the world’s largest oil endowment — eclipsing long-standing energy heavyweights like Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Kuwait.
Despite its vast reserves, U.S. sanctions have effectively blocked most Venezuelan crude from reaching the U.S. Gulf Coast, leaving Chevron — operating under a special authorization — as the sole exporter of limited volumes.
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A Chevron Corp. flag flies on the drilling floor of a Nabors Industries Ltd. drill rig in the Permian Basin near Midland, Texas, on March 1, 2018. (Daniel Acker/Bloomberg/Getty Images)
That disruption has been felt most acutely in Texas, which anchors the nation’s refining hub and hosts several of the country’s largest heavy-crude refineries.
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A renewed flow of Venezuelan barrels could also intensify competition in the heavy-crude market, particularly between Venezuela and Canada, Brito said.
“You’re going to have fierce competition between Canada and Venezuela, which benefits American refiners and gives them more flexibility to potentially lower fuel prices,” he said, adding that he was speaking strictly from an oil-market perspective.
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A security guard was fatally shot outside a Houston restaurant Wednesday evening after a confrontation with another man, authorities said.
The shooting happened around 6:15 p.m. outside Connie’s Seafood Market Restaurant, the Houston Police Department said.
Police told reporters that the security guard, who was working for the restaurant, was standing in the parking lot when a fight broke out between him and another man, FOX26 Houston reported.
Police said the security guard was shot at least once. He was rushed to a hospital where he later died.
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A security guard was fatally shot outside a Houston restaurant Wednesday evening after a confrontation with another man, authorities said. (Houston Police Department)
Authorities did not immediately release the name of the victim.
The suspect was last seen running away from the parking lot after the shooting.
The security guard was working for the restaurant at the time of the shooting. (Google Maps)
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No details about the suspect or the circumstances that led to the altercation have been released as of Thursday morning.
Houston police were reviewing surveillance footage as they search for the shooting suspect. (Mayra Beltran/Houston Chronicle, File)
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Officials said investigators were reviewing surveillance footage and speaking with witnesses to get a description of the suspect.
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