Supreme Court tosses lower court decision ruling Biden admin can’t work with social media against misinformation

Update: 

• The Supreme Court struck down a 5th Circuit order barring the Biden administration and several federal agencies from working with social media companies to curb the spread of misinformation. 
• The court ruled a group including five individuals and the states of Missouri and Louisiana, who argued the collaboration violated their First Amendment rights, had no standing to file their complaint.
• The group claimed the government pressured and threatened social media companies into moderating user posts containing misinformation about topics such as COVID-19 and recent elections. 
• The Supreme Court ruled the group failed to show clear links between the government’s allegedly coercive conduct and the social media companies’ decisions when moderating posts. 
• The court previously stayed an emergency application the 5th Circuit granted last year that would have barred the federal government from working with the social media companies. 

Biden social media overview: 

• Who: U.S. District Judge Terry A. Doughty granted an injunction against Biden Administration officials in the case against them filed by the states of Missouri and Louisiana.
• Why: The ruling bars federal officials in Biden’s administration from communicating with or trying to influence social media companies and their content.
• Where: The preliminary injunction came in federal court in Louisiana.

(July 10, 2023)

A federal judge in Louisiana granted a preliminary injunction against federal officials in many offices of the Biden administration to prevent them from communicating with or trying to influence the content moderation process at social media companies.

The lawsuit, led by the states of Missouri and Louisiana, aimed to block practices of federal government influence over content moderation of COVID-19 information on social media networks that was termed social media disinformation.

The Biden social media preliminary injunction from U.S. District Judge Terry A. Doughty names specific federal departments and individual officials who cannot contact the social media companies.

Doughty’s ruling included specific actions those officials cannot take, such as “taking any action such as urging, encouraging, pressuring, or inducing in any manner social-media companies to remove, delete, suppress, or reduce posted content protected by the Free Speech Clause of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution,” the Biden social media ruling said.

The ruling also bars those officials from working with the Election Integrity Partnership, the Virality Project, the Stanford Internet Observatory or any like project or group with the purpose of influencing social media content moderation.

A group of accepted practices that are not banned were also included in Doughty’s ruling, including informing the companies of criminal conduct, national security threats, extortion, voter suppression efforts, illegal campaign contributions, cyber attacks, public safety threats, malicious cyber activity and more.

Ruling affects wide range of federal health, security, investigative departments

The social media disinformation ruling includes officials from the United States Department of Justice, U.S. Census Bureau, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Department of Health and Human Services, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Department of Homeland Security, the White House COVID-19 Response team and more.

The U.S. Supreme Court recently ruled that President Joe Biden’s $430 billion student loan forgiveness plan can not stand and that debt cannot be relieved.

Do you believe the president should impact social media companies? Let us know in the comments.

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