Texas Tees Up Taxpayer Trouble with Special Session Social Media Bill

This week, the Texas State Legislature will convene for a special session to consider about a dozen bills. One of the bills is a close cousin of Florida’s law aimed at the perceived problem of social media “censorship.” The problem for Texas taxpayers is that Florida’s law was absolutely ripped to shreds by a federal judge just days ago.

 

The Texas bill, S.B. 12/H.R. 95, is more straightforward than its Florida counterpart, implementing a blanket ban on social media platforms and other interactive computer services above a certain number of users from “censoring” based on the “viewpoint of the user[.]” 

 

Florida’s law is slightly more nuanced, applying the above Texas standard to declared political candidates and journalists while forcing covered web services to jump through all sorts of hoops before removing content posted by average Joes and Janes. Regardless, the underlying principles are the same and aim to limit the ability of private web services to remove content at their discretion.

 

Judge Robert L. Hinkle of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Florida issued a preliminary injunction against the State of Florida on June 30th. His ruling offered no kind words for Florida’s statute: “[T]he State has asserted it is on the side of the First Amendment; the plaintiffs are not. It is perhaps a nice sound bite. But the assertion is wholly at odds with accepted constitutional principles.”

 

Judge Hinkle concluded, “The legislation now at issue was an effort to rein in social-media providers deemed too large and too liberal. Balancing the exchange of ideas among private speakers is not a legitimate governmental interest.” It’s hard to see how the Texas bill is any different in this respect. In short, should S.B. 12/H.R. 95 or a version of it pass, all that Texas taxpayers should expect is a swift legal defeat, amounting to a significant waste of taxpayer time and resources.

 

And the resources in question are indeed significant. Judge Hinkle’s ruling against Florida was only a preliminary injunction, despite the certitude of his language. The case will undoubtedly be argued and appealed many more times, all at taxpayer expense. To get a sense of how much this could cost, we can look to the budget request Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton made for his recent antitrust suit against Google: $43 million. 

 

It would be beyond foolish for Texans to have to shell out tens of millions more to defend S.B. 12/H.R. 95 should it become law, especially with Florida’s case already going about as poorly as possible. With families and small businesses still picking up the pieces after the Covid 19 pandemic, Texans undoubtedly know better ways to spend taxpayer money than defending painfully unconstitutional statutes.