The Constitutionality of Platform Content Moderation Bans From A Historical Perspective
One of the biggest open questions in First Amendment law today is whether bans on social media content moderation policies are constitutional. When the United States Supreme Court considers the issue, what will matter most is not policy but history. Yet little scholarship to date has focused on whether the Founders would have understood the First Amendment to encompass a right for social media companies to moderate content. This Essay aims to fill that gap. It finds that bans on platform content moderation policies are likely constitutional from a historical perspective.