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 challenging the administration’s efforts to curb disinformation on social media.

In a 6-3 ruling, the justices ruled that two states and five social media users did not have standing to show that First Amendment rights were violated when Biden administration officials urged social media platforms to stop misinformation about the Covid vaccine, among others. .

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“To establish standing, plaintiffs must show that there is a substantial risk that they will sustain injuries in the near future that can be traced to the government defendant and that can be remedied by the injunction they are seeking,” Judge Amy Coney Barrett wrote in the opinion majority. “Because no plaintiff has met this burden, no one has standing to seek a preliminary injunction.”

Barrett placed particular emphasis on causation.

“As noted, the platforms moderated similar content long before any of the government defendants engaged in the conduct at issue,” she wrote. “In fact, the platforms, acting independently, strengthened their existing content moderation policies before the government defendants
involved. For example, Facebook announced an expansion of its Covid-19 misinformation policies in early February 2021, before White House officials began communicating with the platform. The platforms continued to exercise 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 government officials “by ‘coercing’ or ‘substantially encouraging’ social media platforms to curb misinformation essentially made these content moderation decisions a governmental action.” The district court’s order was modified to limit the government’s interactions with social media platforms.

The case has already resulted in a scaling back of efforts to limit such interactions ahead of the 2024 elections, while social media giants such as Meta have generally downplayed political content.

The Murthy v. Missouri case also involved the government’s dealings with social media platforms ahead of the 2020 election, before the Biden administration, and into the 2022 midterms.

“Plaintiffs cite allegations of past government censorship as evidence that future censorship is likely. However, they are essentially unable to link their previous social media restrictions with the defendants’ communications with the platforms. “Thus, past events do little to assist either plaintiff in establishing a basis for seeking an injunction to prevent future harm.”

The judges found flaws in several of the defendants’ arguments, including Jim Hoft, who claimed his website, The Gateway Pundit, was censored by Twitter because it tried to report on Hunter Biden’s infamous laptop. Hoft’s post was titled, “Where’s Hunter? How’s Hunter Celebrating New Year’s? New Photos of Hunter Biden Pushing Drugs on Women Emerge.”

However, in the majority opinion, Barrett noted that “Hoft’s own declaration shows that Twitter acted in accordance with its ‘policies prohibiting the publication or sharing of others’ privately produced/distributed intimate media 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 leaking 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 become an attractive model for future officials seeking to control what people say, hear, and think.”

Alito cited President Joe Biden’s claim that social media platforms are “killing people” as misinformation spreads. A few days later, he withdrew the criticism.

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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