A Senate bill that would allow Louisianans the right to sue social media companies that delete or censor their religious or political speech will be reconsidered next week after falling short during a floor vote earlier this month.
Senate Bill 196, authored by Sen. Jay Morris (R-West Monroe), failed on a vote of 19-18 on May 4, falling just short of the 20 votes needed to send the bill to the House. But the bill is scheduled for a second floor vote in the coming week.
The bill would allow private rights of action to be filed against social media companies with more than 75 million subscribers. Under this private litigation provision, a website user could seek actual damages and up to $75,000 in statutory damages, as well as punitive damages and other costs.
Among those who testified against the proposal was Eric Peterson, director of the Pelican Center of Technology and Innovation, who argued that passage of the bill would wreak havoc on the internet.
“The way the bill is written, it would apply to websites like newspapers’ comment sections, video game streaming websites like Twitch, or shopping websites like eBay and Amazon,” Peterson told the Louisiana Record in an email.
Social media companies have free reign to edit their content, he said, given that Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996 allows websites to modify and moderate public comments. SB 196 flies in the face of these federal legal liability protections, according to Peterson.
“It has been well established that companies have First Amendment rights,” he said. “The First Amendment is a protection from the government on infringing on private speech, not on the speech rights between private groups.”
Peterson acknowledged, however, that the Pelican Institute shares some of Morris’ concerns about social media firms that fail to apply their guidelines and terms of services in a consistent manner.
“To the specifics of SB 196 … we believe it suffers from a variety of problems in that it would apply a variety of websites Sen. Morris isn’t concerned about and is unconstitutional,” he said.
SB 196 attempts to assign the state a compelling interest in holding social media companies to a higher legal standard. The bill does reject a civil cause of action if the speech in question includes calls for immediate acts of violence or criminal conduct or involves obscene or porographic content or the bullying of those under 18.