The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit voted 2-1 to strike down parts of a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) rule that would require companies disclose if their products contain “conflict minerals” the Democratic Republic of Congo, saying the rules violates free speech rights.

The ruling is a partial victory for the three business groups (U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the Business Roundtable and the National Association of Manufacturers) that had filed the original lawsuit, that claimed that the regulation violated companies' free speech rights by in essence forcing them to condemn their own products, Reuters reported.

However, the appeals court stopped short of striking down the rule entirely.

The SEC rule requires publicly traded manufacturers to disclose to investors whether any tantalum, tin, gold or tungsten used in their products may have originated from the conflict-ridden Democratic Republic of Congo.

The rule was supported by a number of human rights groups that pressured Congress to include the conflict minerals provision in the 2010 Dodd-Frank Wall Street reform law. Proponents of the rule said the disclosures would help consumers who want to avoid products that encourage mining in areas gripped by rebel violence and humanitarian conflict.

Senior Circuit Judge A. Raymond Randolph cited both the Dodd-Frank law and the SEC regulation in his ruling, writing that they “violate the First Amendment to the extent the statute and rule require regulated entities to report...on their website that any of their products have not been found to be...conflict free.”

Randolph rejected claims by the three groups that filed the lawsuit  that the SEC conducted a flawed rulemaking and failed to weigh the costs of new regulations.

The rule will now go back to a lower court to determine whether the wording in the SEC’s rule, or the Dodd-Frank Wall Street reform law underpinning it, is to blame for the free speech violations.

The business groups in their lawsuit argued that the rule should be tossed out, saying that the SEC made numerous errors in its rule-making procedures, including a failure to weigh the costs and benefits to businesses.

Although the future of the rule is in doubt, the ruling marks a partial victory for the SEC, which has lost a long string of prior legal challenges to its rules.

“Although the commission adopted an expansive rule, it did not go as far as it might have,” Randolph wrote, noting that the SEC “exhaustively analyzed” the final rule’s costs.