The nation's highest court will hear challenges to laws in Florida and Texas that regulate social media content moderation.

Observers and activists on the left and right are watching the cases.

At stake is the right of individual Americans to freely express themselves online and the right of social media platforms to make editorial decisions about the content they host. Both rights are protected by the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

Republicans and conservatives were outraged when platforms acted in concert to ban President Donald Trump in January 2021, blocked a potentially election-altering New York Post article about Hunter Biden's laptop on 2020, and silenced dissenting opinions about the origins of the COVID-19 virus, the treatments for the disease it causes, and the vaccines.

Steven Allen, a distinguished senior fellow at Capital Research Center, a watchdog group, said conservatives have long complained about their treatment on social media platforms.