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Tallahassee, Florida—The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and Protect Democracy urged a federal judge to strike down Florida’s law banning Facebook, Twitter, and other platforms from suspending political candidates’ accounts, saying it unconstitutionally interferes with the First Amendment rights of the companies and their users, and forces companies to give politicians’ speech preferential treatment that other users are denied.
EFF has long criticized large online platforms’ content moderation practices as opaque, inconsistent, and unfair because they often remove legitimate speech and disproportionately harm marginalized populations that struggle to be heard. These are serious problems that have real world consequences, but they don’t justify a law that violates the free speech rights of internet users who don’t happen to be Florida politicians and the private online services on which they rely, EFF said in a brief filed today in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Florida.
“The First Amendment prevents the government from forcing private publishers to publish the government’s preferred speech, and from forcing them to favor politicians over other speakers. This is a fundamental principle of our democracy,” said EFF Civil Liberties Director David Greene.
The Supreme Court in 1974 unanimously rejected a Florida law requiring newspapers to print candidates’ replies to editorials criticizing them. Government interference with decisions by private entities to edit and curate content is anathema to free speech, the court said.
“The same principle applies here to S.B. 7072,” said Greene.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signed the law, set to take effect July 1, to punish social media companies for their speech moderation practices. It follows Facebook’s and Twitter’s bans on former President Donald Trump’s accounts and complaints by lawmakers of both parties that platforms have too much control over what can be said on the internet.
The law gives preferential treatment to political candidates, preventing
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Read the original article: Unconstitutional Florida Law Barring Platforms from Suspending Politicians Should be Blocked, EFF Tells Court