Alabama AG Steve Marshall supports Florida law aimed at ‘censorship’ by ‘big tech’

Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall has joined Republican counterparts from nine other states in support of a Florida law that attempts to regulate how social media companies restrict content posted by users.

The Florida legislature passed the law to stop “arbitrariness, censorship, and editorial abuse” by big tech companies in their decisions on removing posts, suspending users, and limiting the ability of users to share content, the attorneys general wrote in their court brief (attached at the end of this article).

Republicans, including former President Trump and conservative politicians across the country have been at odds with social media giants like Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube over their content management decisions, claiming that conservative viewpoints are disfavored. Laws like the one in Florida and a similar law in Texas came in response to that.

A federal judge court granted a preliminary injunction blocking parts of the Florida law after trade associations representing social media companies challenged the legislation as a violation of the First Amendment.

In a press release, Marshall denounced the effort to block the law. The Republican AGs said the law promotes fairness by requiring social media companies to follow consistent policies in decisions on suspending users and blocking or restricting their content. The law says the companies must make their standards clear and notify users whose content is restricted or blocked.

“For daring to protect her citizens’ freedom of speech, Florida is being demonized by the giants of Big Tech, which have the gall to claim that invalidating the Sunshine State’s anti-censorship law is necessary ‘to protect Florida consumers, small businesses, and free speech,’” Marshall said. “Big Tech’s hypocrisy knows no bounds, and I am proud to join nine other states in filing this amicus brief in defense of Florida’s law.”

Marshall and attorneys general from Texas, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Kentucky, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, and South Carolina filed the brief with the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. They asked the appeals court to reverse the preliminary injunction.

Marshall has spoken out on the issue before. In August, he launched an initiative aimed at what he called the “growing menace” of censorship by social media companies. He and Louisiana AG Jeff Landry set up portals on their state office websites to gather complaints from social media users about suspensions, content blocking, and other restrictions they have encountered.

Alabama AG Steve Marshall wants to hear from people blocked by social media

On Tuesday, Gov. Kay Ivey said her campaign for re-election “fought back and won” against Facebook after her campaign Facebook page was temporarily removed. Ivey said Facebook was trying to silence her because of her criticism of President Joe Biden’s vaccine mandates. Facebook said the Ivey campaign page was restricted for less than an hour by mistake because it had been wrongly flagged as an imposter account.

This year, Facebook suspended Trump for two years after he praised participants in the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol, calling them “great patriots.” Twitter permanently suspended Trump’s account, which had 88 million followers, saying his tweets about the rioters were likely to incite more violence.

In July, Trump filed a lawsuit against Facebook, Google, and Twitter, claiming he was wrongly censored by the companies.

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