So ... The 5th circuit has ruled that website operators of private companies have no 1st amendment rights.
It is difficult to state how completely disconnected from reality this ruling is, and how dangerously incoherent it is. It effectively says that companies no longer have a 1st Amendment right to their own editorial policies.
Considering just how long Republicans (and this judge Oldham was a Republican political operative before being appointed to the bench) have spent insisting that corporations have 1st Amendment rights, this is a major turnaround, and an incomprehensible one.
Judge Oldham:
"We reject the Platforms’ efforts to reframe their censorship as speech. It is undisputed that the Platforms want to eliminate speech—not promote or protect it. And no amount of doctrinal gymnastics can turn the First Amendment’s protections for free speech into protections for free censoring."
That paragraph alone is scary. It basically argues that the state can now compel any speech it wants on private property, as it reinterprets the 1st Amendment to mean that the only thing it limits is the power of the state to remove speech, while leaving open the power of the state to foist speech upon private entities. Fucking ridiculous.