Florida social-media law (unsurprisingly) violates the First Amendment

Judge Hinkle of the Northern District of Florida declared that the law violates the First Amendment and preliminarily enjoined its enforcement. This result was over-determined from the start. The court adopts the views  that speech-protective commentators had been arguing from the beginning, which seemed clear from the argument on Monday.

    • Social-media sites are not state actors and cannot violate the First Amendment. So the law cannot be justified as a way to vindicate users' First Amendment rights.

    • Social-media platforms look more like the newspaper in Tornillo and the parade in Hurley and the state has no interest in "balancing the debate." They look less like the shopping mail in Pruneyard or the interviewing classrooms at Harvard Law School; allowing speakers onto your property is different from controlling the owner's speech or dictating how the owner must provide that access.

    • The law is "as content-based as it gets" and subject to strict scrutiny (which Florida conceded at argument it could not survive). This seemed obvious. It treats political candidates and speech by or about candidates different from other speakers and speech. It regulates large platforms but not smaller ones. It is viewpoint discriminatory, motivated by a desire to protect conservative speech and speakers. And that is before the court reached the Disney carve-out.

All-in-all, a slam dunk. And it is hard to envision a different outcome in the 11th Circuit. It would be cheaper for Florida to go back to cut bait and start over. But it will not, because Ron DeSantis has judges to run against in 2024.