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(Worthy News) – On Wednesday, the Supreme Court decided in a landmark case that the Biden administration may pressure social media companies to restrict content it considers harmful, including topics related to COVID-19 and election security, in order to censor speech on the internet.
The justices voted 6-3 to overturn a lower court’s injunction that had prevented the federal government from “coercing or significantly encouraging” social media companies to restrict speech, determining that the plaintiffs lacked standing.
During the Covid-19 pandemic, President Joe Biden campaigned against health misinformation, labeling the spread of falsehoods as an urgent public health crisis. His administration urged technology companies to track online disinformation and act against major spreaders by flagging harmful posts and sharing information about dangerous content with platforms.
Missouri, Louisiana, and several social media users depicted the government’s advocacy as a pressure campaign aimed at censoring critics of its viewpoints. This led to the initiation of the case, Murthy v. Missouri, by the Republican attorneys general of Missouri and Louisiana, along with five individual plaintiffs who alleged their speech was censored.
Justice Amy Coney Barrett stated in the majority opinion, “The plaintiffs rely on allegations of past Government censorship as evidence that future censorship is likely. But they fail, by and large, to link their past social-media restrictions to the defendants’ communications with the platforms. Thus, the events of the past do little to help any of the plaintiffs establish standing to seek an injunction to prevent future harms.”
Last July, Judge Terry A. Doughty of the District of Louisiana issued an initial injunction that prohibited a broad array of Biden administration officials from contacting social media platforms to censor protected speech. He described the allegations in the case as potentially “the most massive attack against free speech in United States’ history,” and labeled the government’s actions as “Orwellian.”
The Fifth Circuit Court reduced the scope of the injunction but agreed that the actions of the White House, Surgeon General, CDC, FBI, and CISA (added later) likely infringed upon the First Amendment.
During litigation, documents disclosed government requests for social media companies to suppress “misinformation” on a range of topics, including COVID-19, elections, and election security.
Agencies like the CDC flagged posts for removal, and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) reported local election officials’ concerns about misinformation to platforms.
Additionally, White House officials exerted pressure on social media companies to censor individuals such as Tucker Carlson, Tomi Lahren, and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. over vaccine-related content.
In filings with the Supreme Court, the government contended that the injunction imposed “unprecedented limits on the capacity of the President’s closest aides to utilize the bully pulpit to discuss matters of public concern.”
Free speech advocates encouraged the court to create a clear boundary in this case between permissible use of the government’s bully pulpit and coercive threats to free speech.
In his dissent, which Justices Neil Gorsuch and Clarence Thomas joined, Justice Samuel Alito criticized the majority, stating that it allows the “successful campaign of coercion in this case to stand as an attractive model for future officials who want to control what the people say, hear, and think.”
He further warned that the decision was “blatantly unconstitutional,” expressing concern that the country may regret the Court’s failure to acknowledge this.