In Texas, a federal court blocked the Texas law for violating the First Amendment. The case is similar to one in Florida, which was blocked and is before the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals. The Fifth Circuit will hear the appeal the Texas law, but it is unlikely that it will fly even in Texas.

According to the Electronic Frontier Foundation the laws are retaliatory and obviously unconstitutional.

If the laws are enacted, governments could regulate publishers about what content they host. So, if a social media site spikes a story from a Republican saying that black is white because the Bible told him so, the site has to publish it as accurate. Likewise, sites must publish the views of “conservative voices” like the KKK.

Texas explicitly passed HB 20 to stop social media companies’ purported discrimination against conservative users. The court explained that this “announced purpose of balancing the discussion.” This is basically government manipulation that the First Amendment was supposed to stop.

Ironically, HB 20 would destroy or prevent the emergence of even large conservative platforms, as they would have to accept user speech from across the political spectrum. So, Trump’s new site would not be able to stop lefties and real scientists from flooding their sites with facts that were against the site’s views – such as the earth being a globe.

The court noted that companies like YouTube and Facebook remove millions of pieces of user content a month. It further said Facebook’s declaration in the case that it would be “impossible” to establish a system by December 1 compliant with the bill’s requirements for that many removals. As a result, platforms would stop removing content to avoid violating HB 20 -- an impermissible chill of First Amendment rights.