Cite as: 603 U. S. ____ (2024)
3
Opinion of the Court
expression are subject to judicial review for compliance
with the First Amendment.
Today, we consider whether two state laws regulating socialmedia platforms and other websites facially violate the
First Amendment. The laws, from Florida and Texas, restrict the ability of social-media platforms to control
whether and how third-party posts are presented to other
users. Or otherwise put, the laws limit the platforms’ capacity to engage in content moderation—to filter, prioritize,
and label the varied messages, videos, and other content
their users wish to post. In addition, though far less addressed in this Court, the laws require a platform to provide
an individualized explanation to a user if it removes or alters her posts. NetChoice, an internet trade association,
challenged both laws on their face—as a whole, rather than
as to particular applications. The cases come to us at an
early stage, on review of preliminary injunctions. The
Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit upheld such an
injunction, finding that the Florida law was not likely to
survive First Amendment review. The Court of Appeals for
the Fifth Circuit reversed a similar injunction, primarily
reasoning that the Texas law does not regulate any speech
and so does not implicate the First Amendment.
Today, we vacate both decisions for reasons separate
from the First Amendment merits, because neither Court of
Appeals properly considered the facial nature of
NetChoice’s challenge. The courts mainly addressed what
the parties had focused on. And the parties mainly argued
these cases as if the laws applied only to the curated feeds
offered by the largest and most paradigmatic social-media
platforms—as if, say, each case presented an as-applied
challenge brought by Facebook protesting its loss of control
over the content of its News Feed. But argument in this
Court revealed that the laws might apply to, and differently
affect, other kinds of websites and apps. In a facial challenge, that could well matter, even when the challenge is