WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Wednesday rejected claims that the Biden administration illegally coerced social media companies into removing controversial content.
In reaching its conclusion, the court vacated an injunction that would limit contacts between government officials and social media companies on a wide range of issues if allowed to go into effect. The Supreme Court had already suspended the injunction.
The court, in a 6-3 vote, concluded that the plaintiffs did not have standing to sue.
Writing for the majority, conservative Justice Amy Coney Barrett said the plaintiffs, Republican attorneys general in Louisiana and Missouri, along with five social media users, had failed to demonstrate that they suffered harm at the hands of specific government officials.
She noted that social media platforms routinely moderated content even before the alleged coercion took place.
“In fact, the platforms, acting independently, reinforced their pre-existing content moderation policies prior to the involvement of the government defendants,” he added.
While the evidence shows that government officials “played a role” in moderation choices, that is not enough to justify a sweeping injunction, Barrett wrote.
The plaintiffs also failed to demonstrate that previous examples of content moderation could be linked to communications government officials had with the platforms, she added.
The states, for example, claimed that a Louisiana state representative’s Facebook post about the Covid-19 vaccine was restricted due to government intervention, but Barrett said there was “no evidence to support the states’ claim.”
Justice Samuel Alito wrote a strong dissent, joined by two other conservatives, Justice Clarence Thomas and Justice Neil Gorsuch.
Alito suggested the dispute was “one of the most important free speech cases to come before this court in years,” saying the government’s actions were “clearly unconstitutional.”
Most “allow the successful campaign of coercion in this case to be an attractive model for future officials who want to control what people say, hear and think,” he added. The fact that the coercion was “more subtle” than other examples made it “even more dangerous,” Alito said.
Jenin Younes, a lawyer with the New Alliance for Civil Liberties who represents the individual plaintiffs, said the court “gave the green light to the government’s unprecedented censorship regime.”
His clients include doctors who have questioned Covid-19 policies and Jim Hoft, founder of The Gateway Pundit, a right-wing news site.
Hoft said posts about a notorious laptop owned by Hunter Biden, President Joe Biden’s son, were suppressed. But Barrett wrote in Wednesday’s ruling that there was no evidence to show that content moderation decisions could be attributed to the FBI or the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, as he claimed.
Barrett pointed out that Hoft cited an allegedly censored post written by his brother, not one he wrote himself, which was another reason he couldn’t show harm.
A Justice Department spokesperson declined to comment.
The plaintiffs filed the underlying lawsuit, alleging that U.S. government authorities went too far in pressuring platforms to moderate content.
The lawsuit included several claims related to activities that occurred in 2020 and before, including efforts to stop the spread of false information about Covid and the presidential election. Donald Trump was president at the time, but the district court’s decision focused on actions taken by the government after Joe Biden’s inauguration in January 2021.
In July last year, Louisiana-based U.S. District Judge Terry Doughty banned authorities from “communications of any kind with social media companies that request, encourage, pressure, or in any way induce the removal, deletion, suppression or reduction of content containing protected content.” free speech.”
The New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals later narrowed the scope of Doughty’s injunction. But the appeals court still demanded that the White House, FBI and top health officials not “significantly coerce or encourage” social media companies to remove content that the Biden administration considered to be misinformation.
The case is one of two that the justices have ruled this term on the practice known as “jawboning,” in which the government relies on private parties to do what it wants, sometimes with the implicit threat of adverse consequences if demands are not met. satisfied.
In the other case, the court ruled in favor of the National Rifle Association, which alleges that a New York state official illegally pressured companies to cease doing business with the gun rights group.
Those challenging the government’s actions say that in each case there was a violation of the First Amendment of the Constitution, which protects free speech rights.
This story originally appeared on NBCNews.com read the full story
