The Copia Institute has filed an amicus brief at the Fourth Circuit in a case where West Virginia is trying to punish Apple for not filtering child sexual abuse material the way the state thinks it should. The brief frames the appeal as raising a narrow question: whether Apple can be held liable for content that flows through its platform, even though Apple did not create that content.
The filing argues that Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act is meant to prevent exactly this kind of state action. In the Institute's view, allowing West Virginia to prosecute Apple for its content moderation choices would undermine the federal policy that platforms should not be treated as the publishers of third-party speech.
The case thus tests how far state enforcement can go before it collides with federal immunity. The amicus brief urges the court to keep that boundary intact, warning that letting states second-guess platform filtering decisions would recreate the very liability mess Section 230 was designed to avoid.