USCA11 Case: 21-12355 21-12355 Date Filed: 05/23/2022 Opinion of the Court Page: 15 of 67 15 close” to surviving strict scrutiny because, it said, “leveling the playing field” for speech is not a legitimate state interest, the provisions aren’t narrowly tailored, and the State hadn’t even argued that the provisions could survive such scrutiny. Id. at 27. The court further noted that even if more permissive intermediate scrutiny applied, the provisions wouldn’t survive because they don’t meet the narrow-tailoring requirement and instead “seem designed not to achieve any governmental interest but to impose the maximum available burden on the social media platforms.” Id. at 28. The court concluded that the plaintiffs easily met the remaining requirements for a preliminary injunction. The State appealed. Before us, the State first argues that the plaintiffs are unlikely to succeed on their preemption challenge because some applications of the Act are consistent with § 230. Second, and more importantly for our purposes, the State contends that S.B. 7072 doesn’t even implicate—let alone violate—the First Amendment because the platforms aren’t engaged in protected speech. Rather, the State asserts that the Act merely requires platforms to “host” third-parties’ speech, which, it says, they may constitutionally be compelled to do under two Supreme Court decisions—PruneYard Shopping Center v. Robins, 447 U.S. 74 (1980), and Rumsfeld v. Forum for Academic & Institutional Rights, Inc., 547 U.S. 47 (2006). Alternatively, the State says, the Act doesn’t trigger First Amendment scrutiny because it reflects the State’s permissible decision to treat social-media platforms like “common carriers.”