Right Wing Judges Let Texas Ban Social Media Apps From Banning Republicans

A panel of Republican-appointed judges reversed a lower courts ruling this past week that had previously thrown out a Texas law that allowed users to sue social media outlets for banning them over their "politics." It was a piece of legislation that was searching for a problem that didn't actually exist, but the right wing judges on the panel decided that it was a good idea to let the law stand. Ring of Fire's Farron Cousins explains what happens from here.

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*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.

A panel of conservative judges on the fifth judicial circuit ruled this week that Texas' social media law, we'll call it that, can in fact go into effect after a lower court said that this law violated the free speech, you know, rights of social media companies. The law in question, in case you're not familiar with it basically said, and it was signed by Greg Abbot, governor of Texas ,said that you cannot if you run a social media platform with more than 50 million unique users a month, you cannot ban people based on their political ideology and you have to show us the state of Texas, how you moderate comments. Basically, you gotta let us peak under the hood and see how you're running your business over there in California.

So immediately on its face, like it would be very obvious to anybody, even without a legal degree, like you can't do that. Texas can't pass a law restricting what a CA, a company in California can do, right? That violates interstate commerce. You cannot do that and that's basically what the lower court judge said. But this panel of three judges, one appointed by Reagan, one appointed by W Bush, one appointed by Donald Trump. Two out of the three, we don't know who voted how, said that, hey, you know what, that's a good idea Texas. We're gonna let your little bitty law stand and you can now punish social media companies. Only those with more than 50 million unique user, users a month for banning somebody for their political ideology, which for the record, wasn't even a thing that was happening.

This was legislation that was passed searching for a problem that didn't exist. Nobody has been banned because they are a conservative or because they are a liberal. They were banned for violating the terms of service, which is within the constitutional rights of those corporations thanks to court cases that Republicans have filed over the years and taken to the Supreme Court to victory. Y'all did this to yourselves, and now you're whining that you're the ones having to face consequences for it because you don't wanna play by the rules of the corporations. But I do have to laugh at the fact that this Texas law, again, 50 million unique users in the course of a month, if you don't hit that, the law doesn't apply to you. So no Gab, no Parler, no Telegram, no FrankSpeech, no Truth Social, because those things aren't popular.

They don't have as many users. But yeah, Twitter, Facebook, oh yeah, you guys have to comply with this. All those little conservative social media outlets, y'all are exempt. You may go along your way. You can ban anybody for political reasons that you want. This law will be overturned. This decision is going to be appealed. And as long as they can avoid having to go in front of more Trump appointed judges, they might have a chance at victory. But if this thing makes it to that conservative Supreme Court, well, we've already seen what they're willing to do to Roe. So I have little doubt whatsoever that they would do the same thing with this Texas law and allow Texas to oppress these companies that aren't even operating from inside their own borders.