The modern public square is private.

That paradox is the lesson handed down by the Supreme Court in NetChoice v. Paxton and Moody v. NetChoice, two cases in which the world’s largest social media empires challenged state laws in Texas and Florida that curtailed their practice of online content moderation.

Just a few terms ago, the court observed that “social-media platforms have become the modern public square.” But on Monday, at least five justices opined that the platforms’ central content features—for example, YouTube’s homepage or Facebook’s newsfeed—are a “distinctive expressive product.”

Thus, under the majority’s interpretation of the First Amendment, laws that protect access to those popular speech forums are likely unconstitutional because they detract from the companies’ prerogative of absolute private control.

The court’s actual holding was procedural: It remanded both cases back to the lower courts for consideration of whether the laws have a substantial number of unconstitutional applications. All nine justices concurred in that outcome.

But as with the Murthy v. Missouri decision issued last Wednesday, what appears to be a procedural ruling in fact has significant import for the future of open public discourse.

Major social media platforms have amassed great fortunes and incalculable amounts of cultural influence based on their ability to host, curate, promote, and distribute the expression of others.

The platforms already enjoy immunity from civil liability for content published on their sites under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, a 1996 relic of the pre-social media era. To gain a still greater exemption from public accountability, the platforms argued that their business is inherently expressive and thus protected by the First Amendment from all laws that would detract from their ability to promote or remove the content that their users post.

Florida and Texas saw things differently. In 2021, Florida enacted state Senate Bill 7072, taking aim at several common ills by requiring publication and consistent........

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