The Supreme Court agreed to hear arguments in a free speech case, Missouri v. Biden, with major implications for Big Tech platforms.
The high court, in a short unsigned order on Friday, also removed a lower-court injunction limiting Biden administration officials from communicating with tech companies about content moderation.
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The case stems from a lawsuit that was filed by Republican attorneys general in Missouri and Louisiana in 2022 along with four individual plaintiffs. They alleged that their social media posts about the COVID-19 lab leak theory and vaccine side effects were unlawfully removed or suppressed at the request of federal agencies.
The case will be considered in the next term, which is scheduled to end next June. In the meantime, the restrictions on administration communications with tech platforms will be lifted.
Justice Samuel Alito, joined by Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch, dissented from the decision to stay the injunction.
“What the Court has done, I fear, will be seen by some as giving the Government a green light to use heavy-handed tactics to skew the presentation of views on the medium that increasingly dominates the dissemination of news,” Alito wrote.
BREAKING: Supreme Court agrees to hear Missouri v. Biden, a signifiant free speech case involving the Biden administration’s urging of media platforms to censor online speech. pic.twitter.com/qdfsBUCtPT
— Kaelan Deese (@KaelanDC) October 20, 2023
Alito argued the injunction’s removal was unnecessary because it only applied “when the Government crosses the line and begins to coerce or control others’ exercise of their free-speech rights.” He argued that “it does not appear that any of the Government’s hypothetical communications would actually be prohibited by the injunction.”
“Despite the Government’s conspicuous failure to establish a threat of irreparable harm, the majority stays the injunction and thus allows the defendants to persist in committing the type of First Amendment violations that the lower courts identified,” Alito added.
Louisiana-based U.S. District Judge Terry Doughty issued an order in July that limited the federal government’s communications with social media companies about virtually all content. The subsequent 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruling by a three-judge panel on Sept. 11 agreed with the decision, though it narrowed the number of government-affiliated entities affected by the decision.
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“The nation’s highest court will hear one of the most important free speech cases in a generation,” Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-MO) posted on X, formerly Twitter. “I’m proud to have filed this case when I was AG, and will always defend free speech.” Schmitt filed the suit as attorney general of Missouri, before he was elected to the Senate.
“We look forward to dismantling Joe Biden’s vast censorship enterprise at the nation’s highest court,” Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey added.
