Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/23pdf/22-277_d18f.pdf
Page Number: 16.0

10 

MOODY v. NETCHOICE, LLC 

Opinion of the Court 

that issue.  In the lower courts, NetChoice and the States 
alike treated the laws as having certain heartland applica-
tions, and mostly confined their battle to that terrain.  More 
specifically, the focus  was on how the laws applied to the 
content-moderation practices that giant social-media plat-
forms use on their best-known services to filter, alter, or la-
bel their users’ posts.  Or more specifically still, the focus
was on how the laws applied to Facebook’s News Feed and
YouTube’s  homepage.    Reflecting  the  parties’  arguments,
the Eleventh and Fifth Circuits also mostly confined their
analysis in that way.  See 34 F. 4th, at 1210, 1213 (consid-
ering “platforms like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Tik-
Tok” and content moderation in “viewers’ feeds”); 49 F. 4th,
at 445, 460, 478, 492 (considering platforms “such as Face-
book, Twitter, and YouTube” and referencing users’ feeds); 
see also id., at 501 (Southwick, J., concurring in part and 
dissenting in part) (analyzing a curated feed).  On their way 
to opposing conclusions, they concentrated on the same is-
sue: whether a state law can regulate the content-moderation 
practices  used  in  Facebook’s  News  Feed  (or  near  equiva-
lents).  They did not address the full range of activities the
laws cover, and measure the constitutional against the un-
constitutional  applications.  In  short,  they  treated  these 
cases more like as-applied claims than like facial ones.

The first step in the proper facial analysis is to assess the
state laws’ scope.  What activities, by what actors, do the
laws prohibit or otherwise regulate?  The laws of course dif-
fer one from the other.  But both, at least on their face, ap-
pear  to  apply  beyond  Facebook’s  News  Feed  and  its  ilk. 
Members of this Court asked some of the relevant questions 
at  oral  argument.  Starting  with  Facebook  and  the  other 
giants:  To  what  extent,  if  at  all,  do  the  laws  affect  their 
other  services,  like  direct  messaging  or  events  manage-
ment?  See Tr. of Oral Arg. in No. 22–555, pp. 62–63; Tr. of 
Oral  Arg.  in  No.  22–277,  pp. 24–25;  App.  in  No.  22–277, 
pp. 129, 159.  And beyond those social-media entities, what