Avril Elfi from OAN
Wednesday, June 26, 2024 12:07 PM
The Supreme Court dismissed a lawsuit accusing the Biden administration of illegally conspiring with big tech companies to censor social media posts about the COVID-19 pandemic, mRNA vaccines and Hunter Biden’s laptop.
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The case stemmed from a lawsuit filed by the attorneys general of Missouri and Louisiana, who accused government officials of working with tech companies “under the guise of combating misinformation” to censor speech on social media.
Censored topics included the Hunter Biden laptop, which was initially falsely claimed by more than 50 “experts” to be Russian disinformation, the origins of COVID-19, and the effectiveness, or lack thereof, of masks in fighting the virus.
Justice Amy Coney Barrett, writing the majority opinion, argued that the plaintiffs lacked standing to bring the challenge. Additionally, in 2021, “Justice Barrett denied a request by a group of Indiana University students to block the university’s mandate to require students to be vaccinated against the virus.” ABC News report.
As time has passed, political commentators have argued that Barrett appears to be leaning more leftward, especially since she supported Joe Biden on votes on border security.
“Plaintiffs are asking us to investigate years of communications between dozens of federal employees across a variety of agencies on a variety of social media platforms about a variety of topics, despite the lack of a tangible connection between Defendants’ conduct and their harm,” she said. “This court’s standing principles allow us to ‘[ing such] “The Department of Justice has a duty of ‘general legal oversight’ over the other branches of government. Accordingly, we reverse the judgment of the Fifth Circuit and remand the case for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.”
The vote was 6-3, with Justices Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch voting to confirm the case.
“Plaintiffs assert standing based on ‘direct censorship’ of their own speech and the ‘right to hear’ the speech of others that has been censored by social media,” Barrett wrote. “Notably, while both theories rely on platform conduct, plaintiffs do not seek to enjoin platforms from throttling posts or accounts. Plaintiffs seek to enjoin government agencies and authorities from pressuring or encouraging platforms to suppress protected speech in the future,” Barrett wrote, adding that the states’ “alleged damages” are “one step ahead and anticipatory in nature.”
Last year, U.S. District Judge Terry A. Doughty issued a preliminary injunction blocking representatives of the White House and executive branch from meeting with tech companies about content moderation, arguing that past conduct of this kind “probably” violates the First Amendment.
“If Plaintiffs’ allegations are true, this lawsuit represents the largest attack on free speech in American history,” the preliminary injunction reads. “The federal government, and Defendants in particular, have allegedly engaged in a blatant disregard for First Amendment free speech rights in their efforts to stop the dissemination of false information.”
The membership invitation also stated that while “the censorship alleged in this case targeted almost exclusively conservative speech,” the issues the case raised “transcend party lines.”
The Justice Department quickly responded, arguing that the temporary ban would cause “irreparable harm” because it could “hinder the federal government’s efforts to work with social media companies on efforts to prevent serious harm to the American people and our democratic process.”
On Wednesday, Barrett wrote that the Supreme Court’s “standing to litigate doctrine prevents us from exercising our ‘right to litigate.'”[ing such] “There is no infringement of the ‘general legal oversight’ authority over other branches of government. Accordingly, we reverse the judgment of the Fifth Circuit and remand the case for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.”
But Justice Alito said, “If the lower courts’ assessment of the voluminous record is correct, this is one of the most significant free speech cases to come before this Court in recent years.”
“For months, government officials have relentlessly pressured Facebook to stifle Americans’ free speech. And because the Supreme Court has wrongfully refused to address this serious threat to the First Amendment, I respectfully dissent,” he said.
Barrett then argued that “Plaintiffs allege past allegations of government censorship as evidence of possible future censorship.”
“But by and large, they do not link past social media regulations to the defendants’ communications with the platforms. Thus, past events do little to help plaintiffs establish standing to seek injunctions to prevent future harm,” she said.
“These past harms and threatened future harms were caused and traceable to agency-imposed censorship, and the injunctive relief she sought was an available and appropriate remedy,” Alito countered, adding that the evidence was “more than ample” to prove the plaintiffs’ standing to sue.
“[A]”We are therefore obligated to address the free speech issues this case raises,” he added.
“Yet the court has neglected its duty and accepted the success of the enforcement campaign in this case as an attractive model for future officials who want to control what the public says, hears and thinks. This is unfortunate,” he said.
“What the officials did in this case was more subtle than the clumsy enforcement campaign found unconstitutional in Vullo, but no less coercive,” Justice Alito continued, citing a recent First Amendment case decided earlier this term. “And it was even more dangerous because of the perpetrators’ high status. It is clearly unconstitutional, and the nation may come to regret that the Supreme Court did not say so. Officials who read today’s decision along with Vullo will get a message: With a sophisticated enough enforcement campaign, it may get away with it. That is not the message this Supreme Court should be sending.”
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