Twitter, to be exact.
Thomas is going after Section 230.
He’s now suggesting that social meida companies may not have a “First Amendment” right to regulate online speech.
Thomas is calling them “common carriers” and “places of public accommodation” in a stunning rebuke of the massive overreach that Twitter, Facebook, and other tech tyrants have used to impose their political ideologies on Americans.
Chief Justice Thomas signals that he’s ready to nuke Twitter.
— Comfortably Smug (@ComfortablySmug) April 5, 2021
Hell yeah https://t.co/9dlaKzgQ2M
Here are more details on Thomas’s line of thinking from uber-liberal “journo” Mark Joseph Stern who writes for Slate. He’s nervous:
In other words, Clarence Thomas is inviting Congress to ban social media companies from engaging in content moderation by stripping them of their own First Amendment rights and transforming them, for legal purposes, into common carriers or public accommodations.
You know the conservatives who have been arguing—unsuccessfully so far—that social media companies are so powerful that Congress can essentially override their own First Amendment rights and force them to host certain speech on their platforms? Thomas just endorsed that argument.
!!! Thomas cites arguments that Section 230, which provides immunity to platforms for third-party content, *violates the First Amendment.*
Legal scholars often talk about how fringe constitutional arguments go from “off the wall” to “on the wall.” Clarence Thomas just took a huge step toward moving arguments against social media companies’ right to engage in content modification “on the wall”—into the mainstream.
I am confident that Clarence Thomas’ rallying cry for legislation overriding social media companies’ First Amendment rights and forcing them to host speech is *entirely* about right-wing fears that Twitter, Facebook, etc. are censoring conservative speech
In other news, Gorsuch, joined by Alito, wants to expand employers’ obligation to grant religious accommodations to workers under Title VII. Kavanaugh and Thomas have suggested they support this move, as well.
Back to Thomas: His position appears to be that corporations have a First Amendment right to spend an unlimited amount of money influencing elections—free of disclosure requirements—but no First Amendment right to disassociate with speech they do not like. Extraordinary.
You can practically see the fear dripping off these tweets from this liberal reporter.
Thomas is the only hope we have to help right these wrongs…and liberals know it. Check this out:
