"The Supreme Court on Tuesday sided with the technology industry and blocked a controversial Texas law that bars large social media platforms..."

"... like Facebook and Twitter from removing posts based on the viewpoints they express. The justices divided 5-4 in an ideologically scrambled vote.... When Texas Gov. Greg Abbott signed the law last September, he declared that 'conservative viewpoints in Texas cannot be banned on social media.' Tech companies challenged the law, saying it violates their First Amendment right to control what speech appears on their platforms.... Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton [argued that because the law] only requires social media platforms to serve customers on an equal footing... [and that they are] 'common carriers' – a legal term for businesses that transport people, goods, or services and cannot pick and choose among their customers.... In his dissent, Alito explained that the court should not reinstate [the district court's] injunction unless the technology groups can show that, under existing law, they are likely to prevail on the merits of their challenge. But whether the groups can make that showing, Alito suggested, 'is quite unclear,' because both the law and the business models for social media platforms are 'novel.'"

Writes Amy Howe at SCOTUSblog.