Good morning, Patriots!

Well, well, well... Any #Texans in here? Looks like some good news is heading your way. I don't know if you were aware, but Texas, like Florida, had passed a law that was intended to hold Social Media companies liable for politically-biased infringements of their citizens' freedom of speech. As you might expect, the #BigTech social media companies who were committing such infringements immediately sued to block the law from being implemented. That was where things stayed until just the other day when a federal judge decided against the social media companies and allowed Texas' anti-censorship law to go into effect.

This decision did not consider the constitutionality of the law, but rather allowed it to proceed while that is being determined. From what I have heard regarding this law, it simply gives Texas citizens the ability to appeal to their Attorney General to file suit against social media companies if they feel their freedom of speech is being infringed. If this law is allowed to stand, and we start getting some lawsuits from the Texas Attorney General, this may end up being a game changer as it pertains to censorship practices from these companies because they run the risk of enabling the state to find out the truth about how they conduct their censorship through Discovery proceedings in court. I guess we'll have to wait and see if this law is determined to be Constitutional or not.

Below is a snippet from the article. You can click the link at the bottom for the full article (I'd recommend you read this one, especially if you live in Texas, or know people / companies that are in, or who do business in Texas). As always, you can use the Promo Code "PARALLEL" for a free month subscription to get past the pop up.

A federal appeals court on Wednesday reinstated a Republican-backed Texas law that prohibits large social media companies from banning users over their political viewpoints.

The decision hands a win to Republicans who have long criticized social media platforms such as Twitter for what they call anti-conservative bias — disapproval that was amplified when President Donald Trump was banned from Twitter for violating the platform’s rules on inciting violence during the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol.

The order did not evaluate the law on its constitutionality but instead allows the law to go back into effect while the case proceeds in district court, according to a statement from one of the plaintiff groups. The ruling came from a three-judge panel on the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals — which is often considered the most conservative appeals court in the country — and was not accompanied by a written opinion explaining the decision at the time of publication.

Two large industry trade groups that represent companies such as Google and Twitter sued to block the law last fall.

In December, a federal district court judge ruled in favor of the groups and blocked the law while the lawsuit continues, reasoning that the First Amendment protects a company’s right to moderate content and called parts of the law “prohibitively vague.” As a result, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton appealed the district judge’s decision to the circuit court.

Passed during a special session last year, House Bill 20 also requires social media platforms with more than 50 million monthly users to publicly disclose information about content removal and account suspensions.

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LINK:
https://www.texastribune.org/2022/05/11/texas-social-media-law-reinstated/