The Supreme Court on Wednesday refused a Republican-led challenge to the Biden administration's communication with social media companies to combat online misinformation on topics related to COVID-19 and the 2020 election.
The Republican attorneys general of Louisiana and Missouri, along with five social media users, filed the lawsuit in 2022, alleging that the government had illegally coerced social media platforms to remove or demote content. The lawsuit alleged that the White House attempted to censor information related to COVID-19 and the recent presidential election. The lawsuit sought to have the Supreme Court impose limits on how the administration can communicate with social media platforms.
In a 6-3 vote, the Supreme Court ruled that the plaintiffs had no legal right or standing to sue. The vote overturned a lower court's ruling that federal officials had likely violated the First Amendment.
“The plaintiffs, without any concrete link between their injuries and the defendants' conduct, ask us to conduct a review of years of communications between dozens of federal officials, at different agencies, with different social media platforms, about different topics. ”Judge Amy Coney Barrett wrote. “This Court's current doctrine prevents us from 'exercising such general legal supervision' of the other branches of the Government.”
Justices Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch and Clarence Thomas dissented.
In a dissenting opinion, Justice Samuel Alito wrote that the majority “unjustifiably refuses to address this serious threat to the First Amendment.”
This story is developing…
