(PM.) Elon Musk filed a lawsuit against the state of California on Friday over its recent legislation that requires social media companies to disclose details of their content moderation policies to the state, according to Forbes.
The Musk-owned X Corporation, formerly known as Twitter, claimed in the suit that Assembly Bill 587 violates the company’s First Amendment rights because it pressures “companies such as X Corp. to remove, demonetize, or deprioritize constitutionally-protected speech that the State deems undesirable or harmful” which “interferes with the constitutionally-protected editorial judgments” of the company.
The suit alleges that the law “places an unjustified and undue burden” on social media companies.
Assembly Bill 587, signed into law last September, is intended to combat so-called hate speech, extremism, and online misinformation. The law mandates that websites and online services that gather personally identifiable information from residents of California make their privacy policies readily accessible to the public, according to Forbes.
The lawsuit argues that the “true intent” of the legislation “is to pressure social media platforms to ‘eliminate’ certain constitutionally-protected content viewed by the State as problematic.”
