A Trump-appointed judge just dismissed a lawsuit by Elon Musk’s X seeking to void a New York state law requiring social media companies to disclose how they define and monitor hate speech, extremism, harassment, foreign political interference and disinformation.
U.S. District Judge John Cronan in Manhattan rejected X’s argument that the Stop Hiding Hate Act violated the U.S. Constitution's First Amendment by exposing it to lawsuits and big fines unless it disclosed "highly sensitive and controversial speech" that the state found objectionable.
Additionally, Cronan dismissed the case with prejudice, prohibiting X from refiling an updated claim on the same issue.
New York Attorney General Letitia James formally filed for the case to be dismissed in November 2025, saying the law helped consumers understand what to expect from social media, without blocking platforms from speaking out or exercising their own judgment when moderating content.
Most notably, X Corp. pointed to a separate lawsuit it brought against California’s Assembly Bill 587, which it argued was “identical in all material respects” to S895B.
The Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which oversees California, held that AB 587’s content-category reporting provisions compelled non-commercial speech about contested political topics, which triggered strict scrutiny of the law under the First Amendment.
However, Cronan wrote that “[t]he First Amendment poses no obstacle to New York’s law."
He added:
“Businesses might not always want to share ev
