NetChoice vs Paxton, and Moody vs NetChoice cases are to be argued at the U.S. Supreme Court

When: Monday, February 26th, 2024, 6:00am - 11:30am (timing is tentative)

Who: Anyone wishing to see this Section 230 case argued.

What to bring': Photo ID and quarters for the coin-operated lockers where we must store our stuff. The lockers are small, and we may go through the line more than once. One quarter reserves a locker for just one pass through.

Where: U.S. Supreme Court building. The line forms on the public sidewalk in front of the Court building, left of the front entrance, between the Court building and the Capital. No RSVP is needed.

Last time we went to the Supreme Court (for Wikipedia:Meetup/DC/SupremeCourt AliceCLSBank) we arrived around 6am and even this was not early enough to see the whole case argued.

We cannot bring cameras or phones into the courtroom. After we are let into the building and go through the first metal detectors, we will have a chance to put our belongings including coats into coin-operated lockers. Supposedly starting at 7:30 we can go one at a time from the line into the building to go to the bathroom. More useful background for attending the Court: http://home.gwu.edu/~zwolfe/site/SCOTUS_tips.html^{[private link]}

Goals

To support WMF Legal/Policy which has taken a position in these cases (links to briefs?)
To learn about how the U.S. legal system is handling patents
To learn how to organize a visit to the Supreme Court.

Background

Diff blog post by WMF's Jacob Rogers and Stan Adams, 7 Dec 2023

The WMF point of view addresses "threats posed by Texas House Bill 20 and Florida Senate Bill 7072 to community-governed free and open knowledge projects like Wikipedia. We encourage the Court to rule in favor of NetChoice ..."
The legal question is "whether a state can prohibit website operators from removing the speech and content of users or banning users" based on their “viewpoints”. That's a question of "content moderation." And the laws also have "substantial compliance obligations, which require that social media platforms explain [every] action taken to delete content or ban users. Proponents of these laws claim that they only apply to the largest companies, but since they are written with vague and differing definitions, we are concerned that they could also apply to Wikipedia and many other specialized websites."
The WMF's amicus brief argues that two dimensions of these laws violate the First Amendment: (1) that the laws are too vague and broad, creating legal risks for Wikimedia contributors; and (2) forcing organizations or communities managing Wikimedia and other websites to host speech they don’t want would violate their freedom of expression. A specific example issue is whether user communities can decide, without legal constraints, whether a topic is notable enough for its own article, whether a source if reliable, and whether a phrasing has a sufficiently neutral tone.
Regarding clarity: The WMF argues that laws affecting "constitutional rights like freedom of expression" need to make clear "who must comply with the law and what they are expected to do. The Texas law is not very clear which sites it covers beyond Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter; if "users" includes all visitors/readers of Wikimedia, then it exceeds the 50m/month threshhold, although that may not be intentional. The law does not make clear whether volunteer editors and admins on Wikimedia are doing "content moderation" in the law's framing, and subject therefore to new legal risk from the laws.
The brief was written mainly by Cooley LLP, and is available online here.