X Corp., the company behind the social media platform X, has filed a federal lawsuit challenging a New York law that mandates social media companies publicly disclose how they define and moderate politically sensitive content categories such as “hate speech,” “misinformation,” and “extremism.”
We obtained a copy of the complaint for you here.
The company argues that the law amounts to government coercion and an unconstitutional intrusion into editorial freedom.
The complaint, filed in the Southern District of New York, takes direct aim at Senate Bill S895B, legislation X says is not only invasive but also constructed with the explicit goal of compelling platforms to align with the State’s preferences on contentious speech.
The provisions, X warns, are “an impermissible attempt by the State to inject itself into the content-moderation editorial process.”
Key to the lawsuit is what X Corp. calls the “Content Category Report Provisions,” which force platforms to disclose whether, and how, they moderate categories of speech including “hate speech,” “disinformation,” and “foreign political interference.”
Failure to comply could result in daily fines of up to $15,000 and potential lawsuits from the New York Attorney General, currently Letitia James.
The company contends that the law is “facially and as-applied” unconstitutional and “violates the First Amendment of the United States Constitution and Article I, Section 8, of the New York Constitution.”
In the complaint, X Corp. argues that such disclosure mandates pressure platforms “to adopt, and regulate, these categories of content, even if X Corp. would prefer to categorize content differently.”
The lawsuit echoes a successful First Amendment challenge X mounted against a similar California statute. In that case, the Ninth Circuit concluded that the law “likely compel[s] non-commercial speech and are subject to strict scrutiny, under which they do not survive.”
It further warned that forcing platforms to “recast [their] content-moderation practices in language prescribed by the State” amounts to compelled speech.
“The Content Category Report provisions compel every covered social media company to reveal its policy opinion about contentious issues, such as what constitutes hate speech or misinformation and whether to moderate such expression,” the Ninth Circuit decision stated.
Adding to the controversy is the New York legislature’s reaction to X’s attempt to seek changes to the bill following the California ruling. Lawmakers refused to meet, citing the views of the platform’s owner. In a letter included in the lawsuit, the bill sponsors rejected talks with X because Elon Musk had, in their words, used the platform to promote content that “threatens the foundations of our democracy.”
X argues this statement reveals a viewpoint-based motive behind the law’s enactment, something courts have long held is unconstitutional. “The government cannot do indirectly what [it] is barred from doing directly,” the complaint says, quoting recent US Supreme Court precedent.
By compelling speech on controversial matters, the law transforms private platforms into enforcers of the state’s ideology, the company asserts. “Many other categories of information… are far more difficult to reliably define, and assignment of their boundaries is often fraught with political bias,” the complaint notes, citing the legislative record behind the nearly identical California law.
X is asking the court to declare the law unconstitutional, enjoin its enforcement, and award legal fees. “The First Amendment protects both the right to speak freely and the right to refrain from speaking at all,” the complaint emphasizes, invoking decades of settled free speech jurisprudence.
