(The Center Square) – A three-judge panel of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals heard oral arguments Thursday in a free speech case involving the federal government and social media censorship during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The U.S. Department of Justice asked the three judges to lift a lower court order that bans the Biden administration and several federal agencies from contact with social media companies.
Daniel Tenny, an attorney with the Justice Department, said during arguments in front of Judges Edith Brown Clement, Jennifer Walker Elrod and Don R. Willett that the theory that the federal government coerced social media “falls apart on the facts.”
He also said that the plaintiffs admitted in earlier briefs that an injunction ordered by U.S. District Court Judge Terry Doughty on July 4 would prevent the federal government from asking social media companies to remove “untrue statements” during a natural disaster.
He also said they admitted the government would be prohibited from alerting social media companies about posts that could be part of a criminal conspiracy regarding human trafficking.
The Department of Justice attorney also said the district courts seem to credit that some of the efforts of the federal government was engaged in with regard to COVID-19 are no longer ongoing.
“I’d like to just point out the chronological point we made in our brief: Twitter and the other social media companies adopted policies in 2020 about COVID misinformation,” Tenny said. “And they (the plaintiffs) say this is attributable either to a White House pressure campaign that began in 2021, which is obviously not true.”
Louisiana Solicitor General Liz Murrill said the “digital warfare in this case is one of the most massive attacks on free speech rights in American history.” She also said that the censorship regime injures the states because of the “interference with our ability to have a process for our people to organize and petition the government for grievances.”
The May 2022 lawsuit was brought by Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry and Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt over what the two prosecutors say is the Biden administration’s censorship of conservative views on social media during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Doughty’s order prevents the Department of Health and Human Services, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, U.S. Census Bureau, FBI, U.S. Department of Justice and members of the president’s executive office from having any discussions with social media companies about “encouraging, pressuring, or inducing in any manner the removal, deletion, suppression, or reduction of content containing protected free speech.”
“Doughty’s order prevents the Department of Health and Human Services, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, U.S. Census Bureau, FBI, U.S. Department of Justice and members of the president’s executive office from having any discussions with social media companies about “encouraging, pressuring, or inducing in any manner the removal, deletion, suppression, or reduction of content containing protected free speech.””
“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, some people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the Democrat Party can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie.
It thus becomes vitally important for the Democrat Party to use all of its powers to repress the truth, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the “Democrat Party.”
I will tell you F B block me and my Son about anything that had Joe or Hunger Biden name in it and I was Jailed a few times and also when I posted something it would say you already said that and it did not even have time to get anywhere and be read and it would post that as the answer and I have slow service and I waiting on Money from F B & Tweeter too and if they can do what was done to Us how come they cannot stop people from contacted kids online you know why cause too many are involved in it Perriod
They need to talk about msn, Yahoo ,Microsoft Censoring conservatives for making a comment. Msn also blocks you from even reading comments . Msn won’t even let me log in to comment now .
Google and youtube did the same to me..