On Monday, the Supreme Court issued its decision in two consequential cases about the future of speech on the internet. The Supreme Court vacated the appeals court decisions in Moody v. NetChoice and NetChoice v. Paxton, ruling that neither court adequately analyze whether the social media content moderation laws in Florida and Texas would be unconstitutional no matter what they applied to. The court sent the cases back down to the lower courts to reconsider.
“he question in such a case is whether a law’s unconstitutional applications are substantial compared to its constitutional ones,” Kagan wrote. “To make that judgment, a court must determine a law’s full set of applications, evaluate which are constitutional and which are not, and compare the one to the other. Neither court performed that necessary inquiry.