U.S. Supreme Court to hear case alleging government censorship of social media

[Geee]

The Center Square

The U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments on Monday about whether the government can persuade social media companies to remove content from platforms.

The Biden administration appealed to the nation's highest court after a ruling by the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals last September that stated Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, the White House, the FBI and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention violated the First Amendment by influencing social media companies in moderating content on COVID-19 and the 2020 election.

More than 50 individuals and organizations filed legal briefs with the U.S. Supreme Court in Murthy v. Missouri. The case was originally known as Missouri v. Biden.

 

Last July, U.S. District Court Judge Terry Doughty ruled against the Biden administration and issued an injunction requested by Republican Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey to stop nine government agencies and their leaders and employees from specific actions and interactions with social media companies. The case was originally filed by then-Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt, now a U.S. Senator. Bailey, the former chief counsel for Republican Gov. Mike Parson, was appointed by Parson after Schmitt's election in 2022.

The U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear the government’s appeal on the question of whether the “government’s challenged conduct transformed private social-media companies’ content-moderation decisions into state action” and violated the First Amendment, according to the document granting the case.

In the government’s brief, it disagreed with arguments "government officials transformed private platforms into state actors subject to First Amendment constraints merely by speaking to the public on matters of public concern or seeking to influence or inform the platforms’ editorial decisions. The Court should reject that radical expansion of the state-action doctrine, which would ‘eviscerate certain private entities’ rights to exercise editorial control over speech and speakers on their properties or platforms.’”

 

Missouri’s brief highlights “103 pages of factual findings, supported by 591 footnotes” compiled in the district court’s ruling against the government.

“These unrebutted findings demonstrate ‘a broad pressure campaign designed to coerce social media companies into suppressing speakers, viewpoints, and content disfavored by the government,’” the brief states.

[Valin]

Can We Say Twitter Files boys & girls?

[Valin]

Mar 17, 2024 #supremecourt #freespech #censorship

On Monday, the Supreme Court will hear the case Murthy v. Missouri (formerly Missouri v. Biden), which could decide the fate of the federal government’s massive campaign to force social media companies into censoring Americans. “It’s the most important free speech case in the country,” Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-MO) tells Glenn. Sen. Schmitt, who filed the case while he was Attorney General of Missouri, describes the “Orwellian” things this lawsuit has uncovered: “The full power of the federal government was being used to silence Americans.” But will this be enough to stop our power-out-of-control government?

[Valin]

A bloodbath in the Supreme Court

Scott Johnson

March 18, 2024

This morning the Supreme Court held oral argument in the case that is now styled Murthy v. Missouri. C-SPAN has posted audio of the oral argument here.

The case arises from the government’s “encouragement” of censorship by the social media platforms, as documented in the Twitter Files. We have followed the case as it has wended its way through the district court to the Fifth Circuit and then to the Supreme Court. We (I) have been pulling for the plaintiffs.

The Supreme Court has already entered an order staying the narrowed preliminary injunction that had been fashioned by the Fifth Circuit while the case is pending before the Court. Justices Alito dissented from the stay. In his dissent he was joined by Justices Thomas and Gorsuch. I thought the Supreme Court stay was a bad sign of the likely outcome of the case.

(Snip)

I listened to the oral argument in order to assess the likely outcome of this interlocutory appeal. I think it is likely that the preliminary injunction stayed by the Supreme Court will be vacated and that the Fifth Circuit decision will be reversed. I am rashly reading the omens of the give-and-take in the argument like a Roman soothsayer examining entrails.

Although the appeal before the Court is interlocutory, meaning the case has not yet been fully litigated, it is not clear if anything will be left of the case when it is returned to the lower courts by the Court’s decision (by June 30). Interested observers are “encouraged” to make their own assessment by reviewing the parties’ briefs filed and listening to the oral argument.

[Valin]

Supreme Court split on White House contact with social media in censorship case
Kaelan Deese
March 18, 2024

The Supreme Court weighed a historic First Amendment dispute on Monday between Republican-led states and the Biden administration over how far the federal government can go to combat social media posts on subjects including COVID-19 information, election security, or possible threats.

Oral arguments before the high court on Monday centered on a high-profile lawsuit filed by Louisiana, Missouri, and other parties accusing officials in the Biden administration of relying on social media platforms to censor online viewpoints unconstitutionally, including conservative ideas. Justices appeared to be divided among a variety of ways to handle the final decision in the case, but all appeared slightly skeptical of the arguments brought by the plaintiffs.

The case began its ascent to the high court docket after a lower court issued an injunction against the federal government in July 2023 that was later narrowed by an appeals court. The Democratic administration succeeded in convincing the Supreme Court to block those rulings while it considers the matter.

The injunction blocked an array of executive branch officials from communicating with platforms regarding content moderation, such as urging the deletion of certain posts. The two matters for the justices to address are whether the plaintiffs have standing to sue the government and whether the Biden administration “impermissibly” coerced social media companies to moderate third-party speech on their platforms.

(Snip)

[Geee]

White House pressure to censor social media no worse than yelling at journalists, SCOTUS suggests

 

Federal officials privately scold reporters and attempt to shape or even stop their coverage on a regular basis, without getting sued for First Amendment violations.

How close is that to White House aides privately and repeatedly badgering their counterparts at social media companies and President Biden publicly accusing Facebook of "killing people," for insufficient censorship of disfavored narratives on COVID-19?

Supreme Court justices grasped for apt analogies in oral argument Monday in what is likely the most consequential First Amendment case of the century, pitting federal officials against Missouri and Louisiana attorneys general, censored doctors and activists. 

Their back-and-forth with each side suggests the high court will at least reduce the scope of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals' preliminary injunction instructing certain feds – but not Biden – they "cannot coerce or significantly encourage a platform’s content-moderation decisions" even if "threats of adverse consequences ... are not verbalized and never materialize."

[Geee]

Ketanji Brown Jackson Concerned First Amendment ‘Hamstringing the Government’

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson said Monday that she was concerned that the First Amendment was “hamstringing the government in significant ways, in the most important time periods.”

Jackson addressed Louisiana Solicitor General Benjamin Aguiñaga, whose state joined Missouri in suing the federal government over its attempts to censor speech on social media platforms during the coronavirus pandemic, ostensibly for public health reasons.

[Valin]

1 hour ago, Geee said:

Ketanji Brown Jackson Concerned First Amendment ‘Hamstringing the Government’

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson said Monday that she was concerned that the First Amendment was “hamstringing the government in significant ways, in the most important time periods.”

 

That is The Job of the First Amendment! Actually that's way we have a Bill Of Rights. To Hamstring The Government.

[Valin]

7 hours ago, Geee said:

Ketanji Brown Jackson Concerned First Amendment ‘Hamstringing the Government’

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson said Monday that she was concerned that the First Amendment was “hamstringing the government in significant ways, in the most important time periods.”

Jackson addressed Louisiana Solicitor General Benjamin Aguiñaga, whose state joined Missouri in suing the federal government over its attempts to censor speech on social media platforms during the coronavirus pandemic, ostensibly for public health reasons.

 

Mar. 19 2024 WASHINGTON

Journalist Matt Taibbi weighs in on free speech being on the balance in the Supreme Court. #SCOTUS #speech

[Valin]

The right to shout “BS” during a pandemic

Scott Johnson

March 20, 2024

I found the oral argument of the case now styled Murthy v. Missouri this past Monday to be utterly demoralizing. As soon as the oral argument concluded I rashly hazarded my assessment that it portends a victory for the massive censorship-industrial complex represented by the Biden administration. My assessment was a hot take based on the tenor of the argument.

The argument seemed to me to reflect a fantasy world. It was unreal. In the case argued by Biden administration, the big sticks from the feds were simply here to lend a helping hand to their friends in social media. They all got along beautifully. No problem! The misinformation promoted by the government went unmentioned. The government appeared only as our benefactor.

(Snip)

As the argument proceeded I was thinking about Matt Taibbi, whose work on the Twitter Files helped expose the nightmarish extent of the censorship-industrial complex. Yesterday Taibbi offered his despairing take on the argument in the subscribers-only Racket News post “The First Amendment Takes a Beating in the Supreme Court.” He quotes Justice Jackson asking if the lawyer for plaintiffs could help sort out her brain-teasers involving government restraint:

“Can you help me?” Yes, I would love to help you, Justice Jackson, to a less challenging line of work… Hamstringing the government, Good God!

That a line about “the First Amendment hamstringing the government” was uttered by one Supreme Court Justice is astonishing enough. Listening as none of the other eight pointed out that the entire purpose of the First Amendment is to “hamstring” government from interfering in speech was like watching someone drive a tank back and forth over Old Yeller. I needed a bite-stick by the end of the hearing.

A lot of us who’ve spent the last years working to expose the federal government’s myriad new content control bureaucracies had high hopes this case might stop some of the bleeding on the civil liberties front. After listening to Jackson’s “Can you help me?” rant, the game seems up (at least for now) at the judicial level.

We’ve been had. I wondered last fall why the federal government didn’t just take the mild rebuke they received from the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals and move on. Now I see the benefit in going to the high court. The government is on the precipice of gaining explicit permission to fully re-charge its censorship machine, potentially leaving this new arm of the surveillance state more empowered than before.

Taibbi writes in his penultimate paragraph:

Murthy already represents a major public relations victory for the Executive Branch. After roughly two years in which momentum for shutting down government censorship programs seemed to be gaining, and episodes like [Dr. Jay] Bhattacharya’s punctured the myth that such bureaucracies only targeted “misinformation,” [Monday]’s hearing will help restore the basic narrative that the activities revealed earlier in this suit and in the Twitter Files was little more than good-faith efforts by a concerned government trying to stop “harm” in a unique historical emergency. As Brown Jackson put it, “What would you have the government do?”

Taibbi’s take represents a worst-case scenario. His fears may be overblown, but he heard the argument more or less as I did.