United States of America: Ruling in Lawsuit concerning constitutionality and legal validity of California Assembly Bill No. 587 (X Corp v. Bonta)

On 4 September 2024, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals reversed the district court's denial of X Corp.'s motion for a preliminary injunction against California Assembly Bill 587, finding that the law's "Content Category Report" provisions likely violate the First Amendment. The court determined that these provisions compel non-commercial speech by requiring social media companies to disclose how they define and moderate certain content categories like hate speech and misinformation, which warrants strict scrutiny. Under this standard, the court concluded that the provisions are not narrowly tailored to achieve the state's goal of transparency and are therefore unlikely to survive constitutional review. The Court of Appeals found that the District Court for incorrectly applying a lower level of scrutiny and remanded the case with instructions to issue a preliminary injunction against the challenged provisions and to assess whether these provisions can be severed from the rest of the law.