The Supreme Court will soon hear what may be the most important case of the term, one that epitomizes the broken political culture of our time. Murthy v. Missouri involves, in the words of the district court that first took it up, “the most massive attack against free speech in United States history.” Missouri, Louisiana, and other state, individual, and associational plaintiffs have uncovered substantial evidence of the federal government coercing and otherwise pressuring social media companies to take down constitutionally protected speech.
The plaintiffs sued in May 2022, after revelations by White House press secretary Jen Psaki that federal officials “are in regular touch with these social media platforms” to push the tech companies to take down discussions of COVID-19 policy and other issues of national concern. The discovery process of litigation produced more than 20,000 pages of documents that showed repeated, systematic instances of the government using strong-arm tactics to pressure tech companies into deleting speech.
