Case: 21-51178
Document: 00516474571
Page: 8
Date Filed: 09/16/2022
No. 21-51178
§ 230, which reflects Congress’s judgment that the Platforms are not
“speaking” when they host other people’s speech. Our decision (E) is still
further reinforced by the common carrier doctrine, which vests the Texas
Legislature with the power to prevent the Platforms from discriminating
against Texas users. Finally, even if all of that’s wrong and Section 7 does
regulate the Platforms’ speech, it (F) satisfies the intermediate scrutiny that
applies to content-neutral rules.
A.
We begin with the First Amendment overbreadth doctrine. It
(1) offers a facial constitutional remedy that protects speech. It (2) does not
apply here because if Section 7 chills anything, it chills censorship. And the
Platforms’ parade of whataboutisms proves their real complaint is a purely
speculative one about how HB 20 will be enforced. The Platforms are
therefore not entitled to pre-enforcement facial relief against Section 7.
1.
The Platforms have asked a federal court to invalidate HB 20 in its
entirety before Texas even tries to enforce it. 3 To put it mildly, preenforcement facial challenges to legislative acts are “disfavored for several
3
The plaintiff trade associations—which include every Platform subject to HB
20—asked the district court to find the statute could never be constitutionally enforced
against them. They did so before the law could be enforced against anyone. See 13B
Charles Alan Wright et al., Federal Practice and Procedure § 3532.3
(3d ed. Apr. 2022 Update) (stressing the “distinctions between the ripeness of broad
attacks on the legitimacy of any regulation and the nonripeness of more particular attacks
on more specific applications”). During briefing in the district court, the Platforms
characterized their suit as a facial challenge to HB 20. The district court’s opinion thus
properly treated this suit as a facial challenge, and the Platforms do not object to that
characterization on appeal.
8