SACRAMENTO, Calif. (CN) — A California law requiring large social media companies to issue reports on their moderation policies remains intact, after a federal judge on Thursday denied a preliminary injunction requested by X Corp.
Assembly Bill 587 — which requires those first reports by Jan. 1 — makes social media companies that annually earn over $100 million identify their existing content moderation policies. U.S. District Court Judge William Shubb determined that the law doesn’t violate their First Amendment rights, as X Corp.’s attorneys argued.
“While the reporting requirement does appear to place a substantial compliance burden on social medial companies, it does not appear that the requirement is unjustified or unduly burdensome within the context of First Amendment law,” Shubb wrote in Thursday's order.
The Attorney General's office couldn't immediately be reached for comment.
Attorneys for the Elon Musk-run X Corp., formerly known as Twitter, argued last month that the bill — written by Assemblymember Jesse Gabriel, an Encino Democrat — injected the government into a company’s editorial process and interfered with its free speech rights. The social media platform said the law enables the government to affect how social media companies regulate their content and applies pressure to those companies.
The judge was unconvinced.
“The required disclosures are also uncontroversial,” Shubb wrote. “The fact that the reports may be ‘tied in some way to a controversial issue’ does not make the reports themselves controversial.”
X Corp. attorneys also argued that social media companies affected by the law would be forced to use specific content categories and create methods to monitor the metrics, which would use a massive number of resources.
However, Shubb found that the law doesn’t require a social media company to adopt the categories — like hate speech, radicalization and misinformation — specified by the state. Instead, the judge ruled that Attorney General Rob Bonta’s office met its burden. The reports are linked to a government interest in making social media companies show transparency about their content moderation policies. That, in turn, allows people to make informed decisions about where they get their news and information.
Attorneys for X Corp. also argued that the Communications Decency Act preempts the law.
According to that act, no provider or user of a computer service can be held liable for taking an action in good faith to restrict access to material the provider or user deems obscene, lewd or excessively violent, among other categories, regardless of whether the material is constitutionally protected.
That means a website should be able to self-regulate offensive material without fearing liability.
Shubb ruled there was no preemption.
“AB 587 only contemplates liability for failing to make the required disclosures about a company’s terms of service and statistics about content moderation activities, or materially omitting or misrepresenting the required information,” Shubb wrote.
The judge during the November hearing anticipated an appeal regardless of his decision.
“Once I decide this, it goes up to the Ninth Circuit,” Shubb said. “It’ll go to the Ninth Circuit and they’ll decide whether I was right or wrong.”
AB 587 passed in September 2022. X Corp. filed suit against the state Attorney General’s Office this past September, arguing the new law violated the First Amendment and state constitution and saying that it forces social media companies to engage in certain speech and interferes with editorial judgments.
"As we have repeatedly emphasized, Assembly Bill 587 is a pure transparency measure that simply requires Twitter and other companies to be upfront about if and how they are moderating content," Gabriel, the bill's author, said in a statement. " It in no way requires any specific content moderation policies — which is why it passed with strong, bipartisan support. If Twitter has nothing to hide, then they should have no objection to complying with this law.”
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