Earlier this year, Florida enacted Senate Bill 7072 – The Stop Social Media Censorship Act – which imposed requirements and prohibitions on some, but not all, social media platforms relating to the speech hosted on their websites. The Act was scheduled to take effect on July 1, 2021, but on June 30, 2021, Judge Robert L. Hinkle of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Florida entered a preliminary injunction in NetChoice LLC, et al. v. Ashley Brooke Moody, et al., which enjoined various Florida officials from taking any steps to enforce the Act because he found the view-point based legislation was preempted by federal law and violated the First Amendment.            

The Florida legislation at issue, among other things, prohibited social media platforms from:

• Barring candidates for office from their sites;
• Using an algorithm to put a candidate’s posts in the feed of a user who wished to receive it or to exclude the post from the feed of a user who does not wish to receive it;
• Taking action to “censor, deplatform or shadow ban” a “journalistic enterprise” based on the content of its publication or broadcast; and
• Changing their user rules, terms and agreements more often than every 30 days

Rob Nussbaum

Rob Nussbaum has lectured numerous times on legal issues and social media and how social media and other electronic evidence may be admitted into evidence at trial. He concentrates his practice in general commercial litigation and appears regularly in New Jersey federal and state courts.

For any questions relating to whether your website or social media presence can be used against you as a basis for personal jurisdiction, please contact Robert B. Nussbaum, Esq. at Saiber LLC.

saiber.com/attorney_profile.asp?id=37&/Robert_Nussbaum

The June 10, 2020 Trending Law Blog post discussed President Donald Trump’s plan to strongly regulate or close down certain social media platforms and the Executive Order he issued on May 28, 2020 to accomplish that goal. Thereafter, on August 6, 2020, President Trump issued two additional Executive Orders – Executive Order 13942 (to address “the threat” posed by the social networking service TikTok) and Executive Order 13943 (to address “the threat” posed by the messaging, social media and mobile payment app WeChat). The legality of both of the Executive Orders were successfully challenged in two district courts with preliminary injunctions being granted by two judges to enjoin the implementation, in part, of the two Executive Orders.

Rob Nussbaum

Rob Nussbaum has lectured numerous times on legal issues and social media and how social media and other electronic evidence may be admitted into evidence at trial. He concentrates his practice in general commercial litigation and appears regularly in New Jersey federal and state courts.

For any questions relating to whether your website or social media presence can be used against you as a basis for personal jurisdiction, please contact Robert B. Nussbaum, Esq. at Saiber LLC.

saiber.com/attorney_profile.asp?id=37&/Robert_Nussbaum

The June 14, 2018 post “The President May Not Block Twitter Followers Because They Disagree With Him Politically” reported how, in the decision of the District Court in Knight First Amendment Inst. at Columbia University v. Trump, 302 F.Supp.3d 541 (S.D.N.Y. 2018), the court found that the President’s decision to block certain social media users from accessing his Twitter account was unconstitutional viewpoint discrimination. On July 9, 2019 a unanimous three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit affirmed.

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Rob Nussbaum

Rob Nussbaum has lectured numerous times on legal issues and social media and how social media and other electronic evidence may be admitted into evidence at trial. He concentrates his practice in general commercial litigation and appears regularly in New Jersey federal and state courts.

For any questions relating to whether your website or social media presence can be used against you as a basis for personal jurisdiction, please contact Robert B. Nussbaum, Esq. at Saiber LLC.

saiber.com/attorney_profile.asp?id=37&/Robert_Nussbaum

On March 26, 2019, the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit heard oral argument in Knight First Amendment Inst. at Columbia University v. Trump, No. 18-1691 (2d Cir.), a case which will decide whether President Donald Trump can block people from seeing what he posts on Twitter.  (See Trending Law Blog, June 14, 2018).

Although the Second Circuit has not yet issued its decision, in a similar case, the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit ruled on January 7, 2019 that the Chairman of the Loudoun County Board of Supervisors – an elected official – violated the First Amendment when she temporarily blocked a constituent on Facebook.  See Davidson v. Randall, No. 17-2002 (4^th Cir. Jan. 7, 2019).  In the unanimous decision of the Fourth Circuit, the court held that elected officials may not block critics on social media accounts used for official business.

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Rob Nussbaum

Rob Nussbaum has lectured numerous times on legal issues and social media and how social media and other electronic evidence may be admitted into evidence at trial. He concentrates his practice in general commercial litigation and appears regularly in New Jersey federal and state courts.

For any questions relating to whether your website or social media presence can be used against you as a basis for personal jurisdiction, please contact Robert B. Nussbaum, Esq. at Saiber LLC.

saiber.com/attorney_profile.asp?id=37&/Robert_Nussbaum