# Moody v. NetChoice **Entity class:** U.S. Supreme Court case, *Moody v. NetChoice, LLC*, 603 U.S. 707 (2024) **Domain:** First Amendment / Platform Governance **Concept Hub:** [[wiki/Freedom of Reach|Freedom of Reach]] **Aliases:** Moody; NetChoice v. Paxton (consolidated) ## Definition ***Moody v. NetChoice* (decided July 1, 2024) vacated and remanded the Eleventh and Fifth Circuit rulings on Florida's SB 7072 and Texas's HB 20, which restricted large platforms' content moderation.** Justice Kagan's majority opinion, formally about facial challenges, stated that compiling and curating others' speech is protected expressive activity and that a State's interest in better balancing the marketplace of ideas does not justify overriding it. ## The Seam Justice Barrett asked "what if a platform's algorithm just presents automatically to each user whatever the algorithm thinks the user will like—e.g., content similar to posts with which the user previously engaged?" Justice Alito, concurring in the judgment, observed that "even the researchers and programmers creating them don't really understand why the models they have built make the decisions they make." [[articles/The New Dictionary of the Machine Regime|The New Dictionary of the Machine Regime]] calls this divergence the "Moody seam," the point where constitutional vocabulary visibly splits between the algorithm as speaker and the algorithm as switch. ## Downstream In *NetChoice v. Bonta* (California SB 976), Judge Edward Davila declined on December 17, 2024 to enjoin the addictive-feeds restrictions, noting the Justices' divided views on feeds; the Ninth Circuit upheld the parental-consent requirement on September 9, 2025 and reserved whether feeds are expressive as a novel question. ## Relationships - **Concepts:** [[wiki/Freedom of Reach|Freedom of Reach]] · [[wiki/Recommendation Systems|Recommendation Systems]] · [[wiki/Lexical Lag|Lexical Lag]] · [[wiki/Regime-Conditioned Semantics|Regime-Conditioned Semantics]]. - **Source article:** [[articles/The New Dictionary of the Machine Regime|The New Dictionary of the Machine Regime]]. ## Sources / Provenance - [*Moody v. NetChoice, LLC*, slip opinion](https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/23pdf/22-277_d18f.pdf) (July 1, 2024). - Kyle Langvardt and Alan Z. Rozenshtein, ["Beyond the Editorial Analogy"](https://www.journaloffreespeechlaw.org/langvardtrozenshtein.pdf) (*Journal of Free Speech Law*, 2025). - [*NetChoice, LLC v. Bonta*, Ninth Circuit opinion](https://netchoice.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/090925-9th-Cir-NetChoice-LLC-v-Bonta-decision.pdf) (September 9, 2025).