Senior Fellow and CTIC Academic Director Gus Hurwitz calls the ruling “an important First Amendment opinion grappling with new speech technologies.”
In TikTok v. Garland, the Supreme Court has upheld a law that would ban TikTok on January 19, 2025 if the app is not sold by its China-based parent company.
Gus Hurwitz, Senior Fellow and Academic Director of the Center for Technology, Innovation & Competition (CTIC) at the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School, provided the following commentary:
There was widespread concern when the law was passed that it was a serious infringement of the First Amendment. The Court clearly, and unanimously, disagreed.
Arguably, the Court’s opinion is narrow, only applying to the unique sitatution of a platform operating at massive scale and susceptible to foreign adversary control. But it is also an important First Amendment opinion grappling with new speech technologies.
The Supreme Court just heard arguments this week about age verification laws to protect children from obscene content online. As with the TikTok law, there is widespread belief that these laws clearly violate the First Amendment.
It holding should give anyone with such certain views pause.
Original source can be found here.