Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/23pdf/22-277_d18f.pdf
Page Number: 36

30 

MOODY v. NETCHOICE, LLC 

Opinion of the Court 

IV 

These are facial challenges, and that matters.  To succeed 
on its First Amendment claim, NetChoice must show that 
the law at issue (whether from Texas or from Florida) “pro-
hibits a substantial amount of protected speech relative to
its  plainly  legitimate  sweep.”  Hansen,  599  U. S.,  at  770. 
None of the parties below focused on that issue; nor did the
Fifth or Eleventh Circuits.  But that choice, unanimous as 
it has been, cannot now control.  Even in the First Amend-
ment context, facial challenges are disfavored, and neither 
parties nor courts can disregard the requisite inquiry into 
how a law works in all of its applications.  So on remand, 
each court must evaluate the full scope of the law’s cover-
age.  It must then decide which of the law’s applications are
constitutionally permissible and which are not, and finally 
weigh the one against the other.  The need for NetChoice to 
carry its burden on those issues is the price of its decision 
to challenge the laws as a whole.

But  there  has  been  enough  litigation  already  to  know 
that  the  Fifth  Circuit,  if  it  stayed  the  course,  would  get 
wrong at least one significant input into the facial analysis.
The parties treated Facebook’s News Feed and YouTube’s
homepage as the heartland applications of the Texas law.
At least on the current record, the editorial judgments in-
fluencing  the  content  of  those  feeds  are,  contrary  to  the 
Fifth  Circuit’s  view,  protected  expressive  activity.    And 
Texas  may  not  interfere  with  those  judgments  simply  be-
cause it would prefer a different mix of messages.  How that 
matters for the requisite facial analysis is for the Fifth Cir-
cuit to decide.  But it should conduct that analysis in keep-
ing with two First Amendment precepts.  First, presenting
a curated and “edited compilation of [third party] speech” is
itself protected speech.  Hurley, 515 U. S., at 570.  And sec-
ond, a State “cannot advance some points of view by bur-
dening the expression of others.”  PG&E, 475 U. S., at 20. 
To give government that power is to enable it to control the