Research Project

From former President Donald Trump’s permanent Twitter ban in early 2021 to more recent developments of sites de-platforming polemic celebrities like Kanye West, fiery disputes centered on social media and free speech have characterized some of the twentieth century’s most combative cultural spectacles. Whether arguing it promotes or limits online speech, American citizens interested in navigating their online free speech rights have since implicated the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution in such passionate discourse. Provided the indispensable role social media plays in our modern world of mass online communications, understanding how the First Amendment affects social media and vice-versa is essential for identifying our modern rights and responsibilities of free speech. But what exactly is the First Amendment’s role in influencing the future of social media and free speech laws? To answer this question, I’ve examined two ongoing cases paramount for determining the future of social media, free speech, and the First Amendment: NetChoice, LLC v. Paxton (2022) and Moody v. NetChoice, LLC (2022). These cases respectively concern Texas House Bill 20 (2021) and Florida Senate Bill 7072 (2021), both of which arose from right-wing legislative movements to restrict the powers of private social media companies. At present, these cases have rendered a “circuit split” between the Fifth and Eleventh Circuit Courts of Appeals, as these Courts have reached conflicting conclusions on the parallel legal questions central to these cases by deriving clashing interpretations of key legal concepts. Such concepts of interpretive controversy include the “Common Carrier Doctrine,” Section 230, and precedents of editorial control. From examining the legal arguments in each of these cases, I derive my conclusions in support of the Eleventh Circuit’s interpretations of the key laws and concepts which will influence social media and free speech, demonstrating my view of how the First Amendment should influence social media. I also provide my vision for the likely future of social media and free speech through the lens of reviewing past Supreme Court precedents on the First Amendment and predicting how the current Supreme Court will rule on these critical matters in upcoming terms.