X Corp. has lost its First Amendment challenge to New York’s Stop Hiding Hate Act, after a federal judge dismissed the company’s lawsuit with prejudice, meaning X cannot amend its complaint and refile before the same court. Reuters reported the ruling was handed down on Wednesday by District Judge John Cronan of the Southern District of New York.
The Act requires social media companies operating in New York and generating more than $100 million in annual revenue to submit two reports per year to the state attorney general. Those reports must disclose whether and how platforms define hate speech, disinformation, extremist or racist content, harassment, and foreign political interference.
What the Stop Hiding Hate Act Requires
The law extends beyond the biannual reporting obligation. According to a New York State Senate press release, it also requires social media companies to post their terms of service in accessible language, including information on the process through which users may flag content. Governor Kathy Hochul signed the legislation in December 2024; it was sponsored by State Senator Brad Hoylman-Sigal and Assemblymember Grace Lee.
The New York Attorney General’s office announced that the law’s reporting requirements took effect on 1 October 2025, with companies’ first content moderation reports due by 1 January. Companies that fail to comply face civil penalties of up to $15 per violation per day, according to News10.
X Corp. filed suit against New York Attorney General Letitia James on 17 June 2025 under case number 1:2025cv05068, invoking 42 U.S.C. § 1983, according to the Justia docket. The company argued that the law impermissibly interfered with its First Amendment-protected editorial judgements, including decisions to remove, demonetise, or deprioritise speech on its platform.
X also contended that the Act constituted viewpoint discrimination, because the reporting requirements address only content categories the state deems negative, such as hate speech, while omitting positive categories such as ‘kind speech.’ A further argument held that the law exposed X to lawsuits and large fines unless it disclosed ‘highly sensitive and controversial speech’ that the state found objectionable. Judge Cronan rejected both grounds.
In his ruling, Cronan acknowledged that ‘businesses might not always want to share every detail about the products or services they offer.’ He held, however, that ‘when the government requires those businesses to speak truthfully about their offerings, the First Amendment typically allows for that kind of disclosure requirement.’ Drawing on commercial-speech doctrine, he wrote: ‘Burger King chooses to generally offer higher-calorie items than, say, Sweetgreen, but the disclosure of calorie information remains purely factual.’
Eugene Volokh, professor emeritus at UCLA School of Law, noted in The Volokh Conspiracy that the court also held the law was not pre-empted by Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, because it does not forbid or mandate any content moderation.
How New York Diverges from California
The outcome contrasts sharply with litigation over California’s equivalent measure. The United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled on 4 September 2024 in X Corp. v. Bonta that California Assembly Bill 587’s Content Category Report provisions compel non-commercial speech, making them subject to strict scrutiny rather than the more permissive commercial-speech standard. The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press noted that distinction as the basis for the Ninth Circuit’s temporary block on enforcement.
That litigation ended in settlement. In February 2025, California Attorney General Rob Bonta and X Corp. agreed that the provisions requiring large social media companies to disclose their content moderation and hate speech policies violated the First Amendment, and that the state would not enforce those parts of the law. An analysis by the American Enterprise Institute noted that the Electronic Frontier Foundation had characterised California’s compelled-disclosure mandates as ‘intended to be an informal censorship scheme to pressure online intermediaries to moderate user speech, which the First Amendment does not allow.’
The Stop Hiding Hate Act was drafted in partnership with the Anti-Defamation League and modelled in part on the California statute, according to the New York State Senate press release. That the two laws have produced opposite judicial outcomes reflects the differing legal standards applied by the Second and Ninth Circuits to compelled corporate speech.
Subject to any onward appeal by X Corp., the dismissal with prejudice leaves the New York reporting regime intact. Whether the company pursues review before the Second Circuit will determine whether the Stop Hiding Hate Act faces further constitutional scrutiny at the appellate level.
