Supreme Court temporarily blocks Texas anti-censorship social media law

The Supreme Court temporarily blocked Texas's controversial, Republican-backed social media law that would have banned major platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube from censoring most content.

In a 5-4 vote Tuesday, the justices granted an emergency request from tech industry associations to block a lower court order that would have allowed the law to take hold, pending legal challenges.

H.B. 20, a Republican-backed anti-Big Tech law that stops social media companies from restricting users due to their political beliefs, was reinstated by a federal appeals court earlier this month, paving the way temporarily for Texans to sue platforms that censor them.

The law was passed last September but was paused until earlier this month and will now go back to being paused until the law is fully considered by the lower court, thanks to the Supreme Court ruling.