Appeals judge baffled by X’s loss over Calif. moderation law, orders injunction

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Elon Musk’s X has won its appeal on free speech grounds to block AB 587, a California law requiring social media companies to submit annual reports publicly explaining their controversial content moderation decisions.

In his opinion, Ninth Circuit court of appeals judge Milan Smith reversed a district court’s ruling that he said improperly rejected Musk’s First Amendment argument. Smith was seemingly baffled to find that the “district court performed, essentially, no analysis on this question.”

According to Smith, the district court “offered no reason” for finding that AB 587 only compelled commercial speech “except for wanting” to follow “the lead of the Fifth and Eleventh Circuits,” which never dealt with “speech similar” to AB 587’s required content moderation reports. Instead, Smith said, the district court seemed to take up California’s invitation to invent a new category of commercial speech that did not clash with the First Amendment.