Case: 21-51178
Document: 00516474571
Page: 15
Date Filed: 09/16/2022
No. 21-51178
Platforms’ “discriminat[ion] against Americans and in favor of foreign
adversaries” and censorship of even a congressional hearing that featured
disfavored viewpoints.
The Platforms do not directly engage with any of these concerns.
Instead, their primary contention—beginning on page 1 of their brief and
repeated throughout and at oral argument—is that we should declare HB 20
facially invalid because it prohibits the Platforms from censoring “pro-Nazi
speech, terrorist propaganda, [and] Holocaust denial[s].” Red Br. at 1.
Far from justifying pre-enforcement facial invalidation, the Platforms’
obsession with terrorists and Nazis proves the opposite. The Supreme Court
has instructed that “[i]n determining whether a law is facially invalid,” we
should avoid “speculat[ing] about ‘hypothetical’ or ‘imaginary’ cases.”
Wash. State Grange, 552 U.S. at 449–50. Overbreadth doctrine has a
“tendency . . . to summon forth an endless stream of fanciful hypotheticals,”
and this case is no exception. United States v. Williams, 553 U.S. 285, 301
(2008). But it’s improper to exercise the Article III judicial power based on
“hypothetical cases thus imagined.” Raines, 362 U.S. at 22; cf. SinenengSmith, 140 S. Ct. at 1585–86 (Thomas, J., concurring) (explaining the tension
between overbreadth adjudication and the constitutional limits on judicial
power).
If we focus instead on “the statute’s facial requirements,” Wash.
State Grange, 552 U.S. at 450, its language renders implausible many of the
Platforms’ extreme hypothesized applications of the law. HB 20 expressly
permits the Platforms to censor any unlawful expression and certain speech
that “incites criminal activity or consists of specific threats”—not to
mention any content the Platforms are authorized to censor by federal law.
Tex. Civ. Prac. & Rem. Code § 143A.006(a). So at a minimum, we
should avoid “determin[ing] the constitutionality of [HB 20] in hypothetical
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