Ian Millhiser

The Supreme Court tossed out a billion-dollar verdict against an internet service provider (ISP) in a closely watched case that could have severely damaged many Americans’ access to the internet if it had gone the other way. The decision in Cox Communications v. Sony Music Entertainment is part of a broader pattern.

Federal law seeks to make communications technology like telephones and the internet, in the words of one older statute, “available, so far as possible, to all the people of the United States.” A longstanding federal program that seeks to implement this goal is now before the Supreme Court, in a case known as FCC v. Consumers’ Research, and the stakes could be enormous.

Conflicting lower court rulings about removing controversial material from social media platforms point toward a landmark Supreme Court decision on whether the First Amendment protects Big Tech’s editorial discretion or forbids its censorship of unpopular views.