{"id":388300,"date":"2026-07-27T22:56:59","date_gmt":"2026-07-27T22:56:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/388300\/"},"modified":"2026-07-27T22:56:59","modified_gmt":"2026-07-27T22:56:59","slug":"5th-circuit-blocks-texas-law-requiring-websites-to-filter-harmful-speech","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/388300\/","title":{"rendered":"5th Circuit blocks Texas law requiring websites to filter &#8220;harmful&#8221; speech"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In Friday\u2019s ruling, judges noted the difference between the age-verification requirement in the porn website case and the content-filtering rule in the new case. \u201cUnlike the age-verification requirement we addressed in that case, [the SCOPE Act\u2019s] monitoring and filtering requirement is all about filtering content, and is thus preempted,\u201d they found.<\/p>\n<p>The 5th Circuit and other appeals courts \u201chave interpreted Section 230 to provide DSPs with \u2018broad immunity\u2019 from \u2018all claims stemming from their publication of information created by third parties,\u2019\u201d the 5th Circuit panel said. The state law required websites to prevent known minors\u2019 exposure to material defined as obscene under Texas law, and other content \u201cthat promotes, glorifies, or facilitates\u201d suicide, self-harm, eating disorders, substance abuse, stalking, bullying, harassment, grooming, trafficking, and \u201cchild pornography, or other sexual exploitation or abuse.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Paxton <a href=\"https:\/\/storage.courtlistener.com\/recap\/gov.uscourts.ca5.221014\/gov.uscourts.ca5.221014.75.0_2.pdf\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">argued<\/a> that the Texas law imposes no liability for harms from the content they host. The law is not preempted because it \u201cimposes compliance duties, not publisher liability,\u201d and aligns with the child-protection goals of Section 230, he argued.<\/p>\n<p>Other parts of law can be enforced<\/p>\n<p>5th Circuit judges didn\u2019t buy Paxton\u2019s argument. They said the law provides for enforcement against violations by the attorney general\u2019s office and lets parents of minors bring actions for declaratory judgments and injunctions.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cActions to enforce the monitoring and filtering requirement are claims stemming from DSPs\u2019 actions as publishers, that is, from their monitoring, screening, and deletion of content, and are thus squarely preempted by Section 230,\u201d the ruling said.<\/p>\n<p>Friday\u2019s decision wasn\u2019t a total loss for Paxton because the 5th Circuit found that a student group did not have standing to challenge the Texas law, which means other parts of the law can be enforced. These require platforms to make users register their ages before creating accounts, to not display targeted advertisements to known minors, to make commercially reasonable efforts to prevent advertisers from targeting known minors with ads for illegal products or activities, and to verify that users are 18 or older if more than one-third of the content on the platform is obscene.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In Friday\u2019s ruling, judges noted the difference between the age-verification requirement in the porn website case and the&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":388301,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[27,29,28],"class_list":["post-388300","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-texas","tag-texas","tag-texas-headlines","tag-texas-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/388300","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=388300"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/388300\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/388301"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=388300"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=388300"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=388300"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}