The Supreme Court is siding with the White House in a case challenging the government’s efforts to curb misinformation on social media

The Supreme Court sided with the White House in questioning the administration’s efforts to curb misinformation on social media.

In a 6-3 ruling, the justices ruled that two states and five social media users lacked standing to show that First Amendment rights were violated when Biden administration officials urged social media platforms to crack down on misinformation about the Covid vaccine, among other things.

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“To establish standing, plaintiffs must show a substantial risk that they will suffer harm in the near future that is attributable to the government defendant and that can be remedied by the injunction they seek,” Justice Amy Coney Barrett wrote in the majority opinion. “Because no plaintiff has met this burden, none has standing to seek a preliminary injunction.”

Barrett placed particular emphasis on causation.

“As noted, the platforms were moderating similar content long before any of the government defendants engaged in the conduct at issue,” she wrote. “Indeed, the platforms, acting independently, strengthened their existing content moderation policies before the government defendants were served with
involved. For example, Facebook announced an expansion of its COVID-19 misinformation policy in early February 2021, before White House officials began communicating with the platform. And the platforms continued to exercise their independent judgment even after they began communicating with the defendants.”

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Barrett was joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, Brett Kavanaugh and Ketanji Brown Jackson.

The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that federal officials “by ‘coercing’ or ‘significantly encouraging’ social media platforms to curb disinformation were essentially making those content moderation decisions as governmental actions.” The district court’s order was modified to limit the government’s interactions with social media platforms.

The case has already led to a backlash against efforts to restrict such interactions ahead of the 2024 election, while social media giants like Meta have generally de-emphasized political content.

The case — Murthy v. Missouri — also involved the government’s dealings with social media platforms ahead of the 2020 elections, leading up to the Biden administration, as well as the 2022 midterm elections.

“Plaintiffs rely on allegations of past government censorship as evidence that future censorship is likely. However, they fail to substantially connect their past social media restrictions to defendants’ communications with the platforms. Thus, past events provide little assistance to either plaintiff in establishing a basis for seeking an injunction to prevent future harm.”

The judges pointed out flaws in a number of the defendants’ arguments. In the case of Jim Hoft, who claimed that his website The Gateway Pundit was censored by Twitter when he tried to report on Hunter Biden’s infamous laptop. Hoft’s post was titled “Where’s Hunter? How does Hunter celebrate the New Year? New photos emerge of Hunter Biden pushing drugs into women.

However, in the majority opinion, Barrett noted that “it appears from Hoft’s own declaration that Twitter acted in accordance with its ‘policies prohibiting the posting or sharing of privately produced/distributed intimate media of others without their express consent.’ Hoft provides no evidence that Twitter adopted a policy prohibiting the posting of private, intimate content in response to FBI warnings about hacking and leak operations.”

Barrett also noted that it was Hoft’s brother, Joe Hoft, who posted the tweet and caused his account to be suspended.

“It is unclear why Jim Hoft would sue for his brother’s injuries,” the judge wrote.

In a dissenting opinion, Justice Samuel Alito wrote that the majority “allows the successful coercive campaign in this case to provide an attractive model for future officials who want to control what people say, hear, and think.”

Alito cited President Joe Biden’s claim that social media platforms were “killing people” as misinformation spread. He walked back his criticism days later.

Alito wrote: “When Facebook failed to comply with their requests as quickly and as thoroughly as officials wanted, the platform was publicly accused of ‘killing people’ and subtly threatened retaliation. Not surprisingly, these efforts paid off. “Facebook has adopted new policies that better meet officials’ wishes, and many users who have expressed disapproval of the pandemic or Covid-19 vaccines have been ‘deplatformed’ or otherwise harmed.”

More to come.

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