Tip Sheets
First amendment case could signal greater free speech regulation by SCOTUS
September 22, 2022
Media Contact
Florida’s attorney general has asked the United States Supreme Court to decide whether states have the right to regulate how social media companies’ moderate content on their services. If the Supreme Court agrees to hear the case, its decision could have wide-ranging effects. The following Cornell University experts are available to discuss the case.
Nelson Tebbe
Professor of Law
Nelson Tebbe, professor of constitutional law and expert in freedom of speech, is a member Cornell Law School’s First Amendment Clinic.
Tebbe says:
“Florida’s decision to seek review in the Supreme Court is foreseeable but also momentous. Because another court recently upheld Texas’s social media law, which is similar to Florida’s, there is now disagreement among lower courts on the central questions. That circuit split, combined with the importance of the issues, makes it very likely that the Supreme Court will take one or both cases. Justices Alito, Gorsuch, and Thomas have already made their views known on the Texas law, and they entail a surprising turn for the First Amendment toward greater regulation of speech markets.”
James Grimmelmann
Tessler Family Professor of Digital and Information Law
James Grimmelmann is a professor of digital and information law at Cornell Tech and Cornell Law School. He studies how laws regulating software affect freedom, wealth, and power. Grimmelmann is the author of the casebook Internet Law: Cases and Problems.
