A federal appellate
court should leave in place its prior decision blocking a Texas law that requires social platforms to screen out "harmful" content to minors, the tech groups Computer & Communications Industry
Association and NetChoice argued in papers filed Thursday.
The Texas Securing Children Online through Parental Empowerment Act (HB 18), passed in 2023, would have required social platforms to filter out certain content to minors -- including material that
“promotes,” “glorifies,” or “facilitates” eating disorders, self-harm, substance abuse, and “grooming ... or other sexual exploitation or abuse.”
A district court judge blocked enforcement on First Amendment grounds, ruling that the filtering mandate was so
broad and vague that it would allow the government to censor speech protected by the First Amendment.
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Texas appealed to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, which upheld the
block in a ruling issued in July.
A divided panel of that court said in a 2-1 ruling that Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act overrode the filtering mandate. That law generally
provides that interactive platforms aren't responsible for content uploaded by users -- including decisions about whether to remove that material.
The Texas Attorney General
Ken Paxton recently urged the entire Fifth Circuit to reconsider the panel's ruling, arguing that the appellate judges interpreted Section 230 too broadly.
"Under the panel
majority’s rule, a state may not impose any content-moderation duty on any online platform, no matter how harmful the material or how young the audience," Paxton wrote.
The tech groups counter in their new papers that the panel decision "got it right," adding that the ruling reflects the "overwhelming judicial consensus" that Section 230 protects web
companies' independent decisions about how to moderate user-generated content.
The 5th Circuit has not yet said whether it will reconsider the case.