US

Federal Court Delivers Win For Musk’s X Against California’s ‘Content Moderation’ Law

Elon Musk Ted Talk

Wikimedia Commons/Public/Steve Jurvetson from Los Altos, USA, CC BY 2.0

Eireann Van Natta General Assignment Reporter
Font Size:

Elon Musk’s X scored a victory against a California content moderation law Wednesday after suing on free speech grounds last year.

A panel of three judges on the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco overturned a previous decision by a lower court that ruled against pausing enforcement of California’s law, Reuters reported.

The law mandates that social media corporations report their protocol for fighting alleged harassment, disinformation, hate speech and extremism, according to Reuters. Large social media platforms must reportedly publish reports detailing their content moderation policies along with data on the amount of posts deemed objectionable and what actions were taken. (RELATED: ‘Dictator’ Judge Punishes Elon Musk’s X For Refusing To Comply With ‘Illegal Orders’)

“X Corp. is likely to succeed in showing that the Content Category Report provisions facially violate the First Amendment,” Judge Milan D. Smith, Jr. wrote in his opinion of the case.

Elon Musk sued the state of California in September 2023. X Corp. challenged the law and claimed it violated the First Amendment, according to The Associated Press (AP).

The lawsuit was originally dismissed by U.S. District Judge William Shubb in December 2023, who ruled that California’s law did not violate the First Amendment, Reuters reported.

A lawyer for X did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the Daily Caller. The California Attorney General’s Press Office told the Caller that the office is “reviewing the opinion and will respond appropriately in court.”

This victory comes after Brazil cracked down on Musk’s social platform in August, banning X and imposing fines on people who use virtual private networks (VPNs) to circumvent the ban.

The ban elicited free speech concerns, particularly since it came soon after France’s arrest of Telegram’s founder and CEO Pavel Durov.