California will no longer enforce key provisions of a law requiring social media companies to disclose details about their content moderation practices after settling a lawsuit with Elon Musk’s X Corp.
Democratic California Attorney General Rob Bonta and the social media platform X Corp. finalized the agreement in federal court Monday, barring the state from enforcing certain reporting mandates under Assembly Bill 587 (AB 587), a 2022 law that sought to compel platforms to publicize their protocols for handling what the bill calls “hate speech,” “extremism,” “disinformation” or “foreign political influence.” U.S. District Judge William Shubb also ordered California to pay Musk’s company $345,576 in legal fees.
“It is hereby declared that that subdivisions (a)(3), (a)(4)(A), and (a)(5) of California Business and Professions Code section 22677 violate the First Amendment of the United States Constitution facially and as applied to Plaintiff,” Shubb wrote.
Makes a sad too, though, because I do love California.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 27, 2024
The settlement does not overturn the law entirely — the goal of X Corp.’s 2023 lawsuit, which challenged the measure on First Amendment grounds — but diminishes its reach by eliminating requirements for companies to submit detailed enforcement reports to the state. Platforms must still publicly disclose their content moderation policies, but they are no longer obligated to report how often they flag or remove content within the law’s specified categories.
Signed by Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom in 2022, AB 587 was framed as a transparency measure to hold Silicon Valley companies accountable for their handling of content considered harmful. Critics, including X Corp., argued the law amounted to unconstitutional government interference in online speech by compelling companies to justify their moderation decisions to the state.
The settlement follows a September ruling from the Ninth Circuit of Appeals, which found that the law’s reporting mandates likely compelled speech in violation of the First Amendment. In that opinion, the court ruled that AB 587 improperly forced platforms to take a public stance on politically charged topics.
“In effect, the Content Category Report provisions compel every covered social media company to reveal its policy opinion about contentious issues, such as what constitutes hate speech or misinformation and whether to moderate such expression,” the opinion reads.
Social media companies are still required to submit twice-yearly reports notifying state officials of any changes in content moderation policy under what remains of the law. California officials have not yet indicated whether they will pursue new legislation to replace the scrapped provisions.
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