(The Center Square) – The U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments Monday in a case evaluating how the federal government censored Americans’ speech online, especially about COVID-19 and other controversial topics.
During the arguments, justices seemed to express doubts about a prior ruling that limited federal cooperation and coercion of social media companies, particularly when the federal government pushes those companies to censor Americans’ speech.
“My biggest concern is that your view has the First Amendment hamstringing the government in significant ways in most important time periods,” Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson said during oral arguments for Murthy v. Missouri Monday.
She added that “some might say that the government actually has a duty to take steps to protect the citizens of this country, and you seem to be suggesting that that duty cannot manifest itself in the government encouraging or even pressuring platforms to take down harmful information…”
The case, a legal culmination of years of COVID-era controversy, comes after years of outcry over social media companies’ decisions on what to censor, and what not to censor, when it comes to COVID-19, the elections, former President Donald Trump, Hunter Biden, and more.
In 2023, U.S. District Judge Terry Doughty ruled that the federal government had gone too far and violated the First Amendment when working with private companies to quash speech and said that communication between the federal government and social media companies of this kind was off-limits.
“Plaintiffs are likely to succeed on the merits in establishing that the government has used its power to silence the opposition,” Doughty said. “Opposition to COVID-19 vaccines, opposition to COVID-19 mask and lockdowns, opposition to the lab leak theory of COVID-19, opposition to the validity of the 2020 election, opposition to President Biden’s policies, statements that the Hunter Biden laptop was true, and opposition to policies of the government officials in power. All were suppressed. It is quite telling that each example or category of suppressed speech was conservative in nature.”
The Biden administration appealed, and now the issue is before the Supreme Court, which is expected to rule by the summer.
During oral arguments, even justices seen as more conservative-leaning raised concerns, such as Justice Amy Coney Barrett, who suggested the ban on cooperating between feds and social media companies could be too sweeping.
Critics of the Biden administration say the federal government clearly abused its power in recent years and needs to be reined in to prevent future abuses.
The issue has significant political interests, as The Center Square previously reported. House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, pointed to Doughty’s comments when he led a hearing last year going after the FBI for its role in pressuring social media companies to censor certain COVID-19 information as well as the Hunter Biden laptop story just weeks before the presidential election.
The laptop, and many of the controversial COVID-19 concerns, were later validated.
“American speech is censored, parents are called terrorists, Catholics are called radicals, and I haven’t even talked about the spying that took place of a presidential campaign or the raiding of a former president’s home,” Jordan said at the hearing last year. “But maybe what’s more frightening is what happens if you come forward and tell Congress … you will be retaliated against.”
At the hearing, Wray pushed back against Jordan’s claims, saying the agency is not biased.
“The idea that I am biased against conservatives seems somewhat insane to me given my own personal background,” said Wray, who is reportedly a registered Republican.
If the court can rule that you cannot discriminate because of race, religion, gender, creed, or national origin, then surely, they can rule that you cannot discriminate against free speech and the right to voice an opinion opposite to one party’s political persuasions, not to mention their outright lies and mendacity. True spoken words are more cleansing than daylight when it comes to healing the darkness of a nation, and the confusion of it’s human minds that by nature will rebel against mindless proposed propaganda used to control their personal human lives. Freedom of speech is freedom of thought and those who seek to control minds with only one side of the argument just seek to control the lives they see as just useful idiots, designed to be consumed as food for the Liberal gods of deception and disaster.
“But I tell you, on the day of judgment people will have to give an accounting for every careless or useless word they speak. For by your words [reflecting your spiritual condition] you will be justified and acquitted of the guilt of sin; and by your words [rejecting Me] you will be condemned and sentenced.” (Matthew 12:36-37)
Good luck with that one Joe
Prob is, so far, the word is that it may be a 5 to 4 decision IN THE GOVTs favor on this.. Unfortunately.
The First Amendment stipulates that Congress shall make no law – supporting or rejecting any religion, or abridging the freedom of speech or the press.
the reason we can pray in private schools, and not in public ones is because public schools receive federal tax dollars, appropriated by Congress, while private ones do not.
Ergo, since Congress funds the FBI, CIA, CDC, NIH, DOD, et al, if any of those orgs pressure private entities into censoring speech, that’s tantamount to Congress making a law abridging our freedom of speech, which runs 100% counter to the 1A.
If that logic applies to prayer in public schools, why not in this case? Seems like a no-brainer.
I’ve not heard this argument raised in regards to government censoring speech by proxy, which SCOTUS is dealing with now. Am I missing something?
IT SHOULD be seen as a no-brainer.. BUT that’s assuming the justices, rule with common sense…
Something of a rarity even WITH a 6 to 3 republican majority on the bench.
This is a monster issue for our future generations. The specter of A.I. throws a monkey wrench into the simple approach to the First Amendment. The problem is the vast majority of the media is left wing, socialist leaning, and essentially indifferent to the U.S. Constitution. Yet it is the First Amendment to the Constitution that enables their current philosophical alliance with the leftist federal government to justify their biases. Imagine how much worse it will be when A.I. enables the leftist organizations of Facebook, Google, the Major TV networks and newspapers to “define” the “truth”. The political harassment of Trump we are seeing now is only a preview to the power these institutions would have with A.I.
I don’t know the answers but we have to preserve the Constitution and at the same time reel in the threat of A.I. before we become a third world country ruled by leftist demagogues who undermine our freedoms.