Debate Fairness(Old Twitter, Facebook)

[Jax]

https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2024/01/social-media-case-reinvigorates-debate-internet-fairness/

As Justice Hugo Black wrote in Marsh about the company town:

Ownership does not always mean absolute dominion. The more an owner, for his advantage, opens up his property for use by the public in general, the more do his rights become circumscribed by the statutory and constitutional rights of those who use it. Thus, the owners of privately held bridges, ferries, turnpikes and railroads may not operate them as freely as a farmer does his farm … When we balance the Constitutional rights of owners of property against those of the people to enjoy freedom of press and religion, as we must here, we remain mindful of the fact that the latter occupy a preferred position.

It is one thing to uphold the right of the sites to limit spam advertisements (as the courts have previously and properly done). It is quite a different thing to allow these same sites that have grown larger and larger, more and more dominant, more and more central to political speech to block the most important political news and opinion debates of each election season.

In the sovereign opinion of the people of Texas, a balance point has been passed. Whether it is news of the Biden laptop; COVID policy debates; prior restraint on speech from specific political figures – all of this speech which would clearly have been legal in Central Park or any other public forum, the voters want to hear all political views neutrally. Just as they require privately-owned phone companies to carry all political views equally or require privately-owned trains to carry passengers of all political views equally. The Texas law carefully leaves full rights for the sites to block any speech that is violent or illegal and seeks no monetary damages, just improved access. The law should be upheld.