Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/23pdf/22-277_d18f.pdf
Page Number: 20

14 

MOODY v. NETCHOICE, LLC 

Opinion of the Court 

discard or downplay.  The platforms object that the law thus
forces them to alter the content of their expression—a par-
ticular edited compilation of third-party speech.  See Brief 
for NetChoice in No. 22–555, pp. 18–34.  That controversy 
sounds a familiar note.  We have repeatedly faced the ques-
tion whether ordering a party to provide a forum for some-
one else’s views implicates the First Amendment.  And we 
have repeatedly held that it does so if, though only if, the
regulated  party  is  engaged  in  its  own  expressive  activity, 
which the mandated access would alter or disrupt.  So too 
we have held, when applying that principle, that expressive
activity includes presenting a curated compilation of speech
originally created by others.  A review of the relevant prec-
edents will help resolve the question here. 

The  seminal  case  is  Miami  Herald  Publishing  Co.  v. 
Tornillo,  418  U. S.  241  (1974).    There,  a  Florida  law  re-
quired a newspaper to give a political candidate a right to 
reply when it published “criticism and attacks on his rec-
ord.”  Id., at 243.  The Court held the law to violate the First 
Amendment because it interfered with the newspaper’s “ex-
ercise of editorial control and judgment.”  Id., at 258.  Forc-
ing the paper to print what “it would not otherwise print,”
the  Court  explained,  “intru[ded]  into  the  function  of  edi-
tors.”  Id., at 256, 258.  For that function was, first and fore-
most,  to  make  decisions  about  the  “content  of  the  paper”
and “[t]he choice of material to go into” it.  Id., at 258.  In 
protecting  that  right  of  editorial  control,  the  Court  recog-
nized  a  possible  downside.  It  noted  the  access  advocates’ 
view (similar to the States’ view here) that “modern media 
empires”  had  gained  ever  greater  capacity  to  “shape”  and 
even “manipulate popular opinion.”  Id., at 249–250.  And 
the  Court  expressed  some  sympathy  with  that  diagnosis. 
See id., at 254.  But the cure proposed, it concluded, collided 
with the  First Amendment’s antipathy  to state  manipula-
tion  of  the  speech  market.    Florida,  the  Court  explained,