Two tech trade associations have filed a federal lawsuit against the state of Florida for a new law that would punish social media platform that bar political figures from their site for violating terms of service conditions, USA Today reports.
NetChoice and the Computer and Communications Industry Association filed a lawsuit in the Northern District of Florida federal court in Tallahassee alleging that the law violates the First Amendment of the Constitution, documents obtained by the news outlets says.
Signed by Florida Republican Governor Ron DeSantis on Monday, the law would require social media platforms to announce specific violations and require a right to appeal any ban or suspension of an account run by a political figure, or the company would face a $250,000 per day fine. The law loosely defines who qualifies as a political figure, and is obviously an attempt to punish social media companies like Facebook and Twitter who have banned Donald Trump for repeatedly inciting violence and spreading dangerous lies.
The plaintiffs argue, however, that the Florida law violates First Amendment protections of private companies by forcing them to promote false, dangerous or hateful speech by political figures that would otherwise violate their terms of service.
“Rather than preventing what it calls ‘censorship,’ the Act does the exact opposite: it empowers government officials in Florida to police the protected editorial judgment of online businesses that the State disfavors and whose perceived political viewpoints it wishes to punish,” the lawsuit says. “The Act is a frontal assault on the First Amendment and an extraordinary intervention by the government in the free marketplace of ideas that would be unthinkable for traditional media, book sellers, lending libraries, or newsstands.”