(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.
Eight of the briefs weren’t in support of either side, including one jointly filed from Netchoice, the Computer & Communications Industry Association, Chamber of Progress and the Cato Institute. It highlighted the concept of “jawboning,” defined by the Cato Institute as “when a government official threatens to use his or her power – be it the power to prosecute, regulate, or legislate – to compel someone to take actions that the state official cannot.”
“The Court should ensure that its decision does not permit the government to do indirectly what it cannot do directly – undermine digital services’ rights to curate and disseminate content,” the brief stated. “And the Court should clarify that there is no requirement of a predicate showing of state action for a jawboning claim against the government.”
The brief also asked the court to explain that any lawsuits from “jawboning” must be filed against the government and not the social media entity to be consistent with legal precedent.
The liberal media can promote products to our children that addict and sexual behaviors that can kill, yet somehow addressing the fact that they do this damage to society, often in humorous ways is claimed to be in need for censorship just because some sob sister aborting mother might be offended, or some drug user socially called out and demeaned, totally disregarding the fact that a human potential life was destroyed. Just where are their heads, not to mention their hearts or moral authority to censor truth out of the discussion, that which might preserve a tens of millions of human lives, and prevent a woman from doing that which she may spend the rest of her life regretting, or a youth from avoiding a life destroying addiction ,,,drugs, sex or otherwise? Demented Democrats always insist on only having it their own guilt-tripping way, claiming some self-destroying fool might be offended, only to ignore the MILLIONs of sane moral human spirits that are offended by the very action they seek to promote and preserve. Just how idiotic is that? Do what you must to yourselves in the freedom of your own destructive life choices, but do not try to censor the truths that might save others the pain and human diminution that you in your ignorance or corruption engage in. Saving souls is much more important than winning votes or elections, which eventually are lost anyway once the truth is exposed, too late for the damage or election to be undone.
Speaking the ugly truth is like the necessity of temporarily putting on the ugly face of the ugly enemy in order to defeat him in the same manner he intends to defeat you, but only the good go back to peaceful co-existence once the war is over, unlike the evils of guys like Putin or Hitler who thought bombing innocent civilians would not come back to destroy him. The difference was that the good prevailed in WWII and the evil stopped only when the war was won. Had the evil prevailed it would only have grown and dominated the good that remained.
Plus, if its “for the good of our nation”, WHY IS THEIR censorship, ONLY EVER DONE ONE WAY, against conservatives!
“Alleging Government Censorship Of Social Media” (copied from the article). Alleged gubment censorship? Are they kidding us (not me and probably no one on this forum). Even some people in the gubment admit to censoring “misinformation/disinformation” (in their eyes and what minds they have) and monitoring people’s internet activities. Reminds me of 1984. And Stasi, KGB, Gestapo. Today we call it the FBI.
This has to show the weak minded and dumbed down just how evil socialist and democrats really are! They are suing to be able to censor American citizens, before you start screeching Trump, let that soak in your callused brains! They are pissing on the constitution and their so-called oaths to uphold the constitution! And it is your deep state alphabet soup agencies carrying out the pissing on their oaths!