The California Assembly Bill 587 (AB 587) – an amendment to the Business and Professions Code relating to social media – has suffered a significant setback: the result of the legal challenge from X (the X Corp. v. Bonta case) is that the law’s core provisions have now been dropped.
We obtained a copy of the ruling for you here.
Treated as an unconstitutional censorship law by opponents, AB 587 was proposed by ten Democrat and one Republican member of the state Assembly and adopted in September 2022, pushed by Governor Gavin Newsom and Attorney General Rob Bonta as legislation ensuring “social media transparency.”
The US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit sided with X and other opponents, arguing that the key demands imposed by the state were, in fact, unconstitutional, i.e., a violation of the First Amendment, and issued an injunction; and now the case has been settled.
