The Supreme Court handed the Biden administration a major practical victory on Wednesday, rejecting a Republican challenge that sought to block the government from contacting social media platforms to combat what it considered misinformation.
The court ruled that states and users who had challenged those interactions had not suffered the kind of direct harm that gave them the right to sue.
The 6-3 decision left for another day fundamental questions about what limits the First Amendment places on the government's power to influence technology companies that are the primary gatekeepers of information in the Internet age.
The case arose from a flurry of communications from administration officials urging platforms to remove posts on topics such as the coronavirus vaccine and allegations of election fraud. The attorneys general of Missouri and Louisiana, both Republicans, sued, along with three doctors, the owner of a right-wing website that frequently traffics in conspiracy theories and an activist concerned that facebook had removed her posts about the supposed side effects of the coronavirus. . vaccine.
“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, on different social media platforms, on different issues,” Judge Amy said. Coney Barrett wrote for the majority. “The current doctrine of this court prevents us from exercising such general legal supervision of the other branches of government.”
Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., joined by Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil M. Gorsuch, dissented.
“For months,” Justice Alito wrote, “high-ranking government officials relentlessly pressured facebook to suppress Americans' free speech. Because the court unjustifiably refuses to address this serious threat to the First Amendment, I respectfully disagree.”
The White House welcomed the ruling. “The Supreme Court's decision is the right one and helps ensure that the Biden administration can continue our important work with technology companies to protect the security of the American people,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said in a statement.
Andrew Bailey, Missouri's attorney general, said he would continue to try to “build the wall of separation between technology and the state.”
“The story is clear: the deep state pressured and coerced social media companies to remove truthful speech simply because it was conservative,” he said in a declaration. “Today's ruling does not challenge that.”
By sidestepping First Amendment issues in the case, Justice Alito wrote in his dissent that the court had damaged free speech.
“If the lower courts' assessment of the voluminous docket is correct,” he wrote, “this is one of the most important free speech cases to come before this court in years.”
The plaintiffs said many of the government's contacts with social media companies violated the First Amendment; Judge Barrett did not address that argument. But in a remarkably harsh footnote, he criticized Judge Terry A. Doughty of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Louisiana, which had issued an injunction prohibiting further contact to address what it said could be “the most massive attack on free speech in the history of the United States.”
Judge Barrett wrote critically of Judge Doughty’s “factual findings, many of which unfortunately appear to be clearly erroneous.” Among his examples was an alleged “censorship request” from the administration cited in the judge's ruling.
“The record you cite says nothing about 'censure requests,'” Judge Barrett wrote. “Rather, in response to a White House official asking twitter to remove a phishing account for President Biden's granddaughter, twitter informed the official about a portal he could use to flag similar issues.”
Dissenting, Justice Alito seemed willing to accept Justice Doughty's conclusions, along with their implications.
“Our country's response to the Covid-19 pandemic was and continues to be a matter of enormous medical, social, political, geopolitical and economic importance, and our dedication to a free market of ideas requires that dissenting opinions be allowed on such matters. “, he claimed. he wrote she. “My guess is that a good portion of what social media users said about Covid-19 and the pandemic had little lasting value. Some were undoubtedly false or misleading, and others may have been downright dangerous. But now we know that valuable speeches were also suppressed.”
He explained that last point in a footnote to the debate over the origin of the virus, citing evidence that it had leaked from a laboratory. That theory, long espoused by many conservatives who maintain that China has shirked responsibility for the pandemic, is now generally recognized as plausible though unproven.
Judge Doughty, appointed by President Donald J. Trump, issued a 10-part court order that prohibited countless officials from “threatening, pressuring, or coercing social media companies in any way to remove, remove, delete, or reduce content posted in posts containing protected free speech.”
A unanimous three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit in New Orleans reduced the injunction, but not by much.
The panel, in an unsigned opinion, said administration officials had engaged excessively with the platforms or used threats to prompt them to act. The panel issued an injunction prohibiting many officials from significantly coercing or encouraging social media companies to remove content protected by the First Amendment.
Two panel members, judges. Edith B. Clemente and Jennifer Elrod, were appointed by President George W. Bush. The third, Judge Don R. Willettwas appointed by Mr. Trump.
Judge Barrett wrote that the plaintiffs had failed to overcome at least two daunting obstacles in their attempt to establish what was required to prove their standing: that the government had caused their harm and that they faced the prospect of future harm.
The first problem, he said, was that social media companies were independent actors with a demonstrated commitment to addressing misinformation before and outside of government stimulus.
Second, he said, regardless of what has happened in the past, particularly amid the pandemic, a plaintiff seeking an injunction must demonstrate a real threat of future harm.
Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, Brett M. Kavanaugh and Ketanji Brown Jackson joined the majority opinion.
In dissent, Justice Alito focused on the experience of Jill Hines, a health care activist who helped lead Health Freedom Louisiana, a group that opposed mask and vaccine mandates.
“Hines demonstrated that, when he filed suit, facebook was censoring his Covid-related posts and groups,” Justice Alito wrote. “And because the White House pushed facebook to change its censorship policies, Hines' censorship was, at least in part, caused by the White House and could be remedied by an injunction against continuing that conduct.”
In May, the court unanimously ruled in favor of the National Rifle Association in a case that raised similar issues. Then, NRA v. WannaThe judges said the group could bring a First Amendment claim against a New York state official who had encouraged companies to stop doing business with him.
That decision, along with Wednesday's case, Murthy v. Missouri, No. 23-411, sent a troubling message, Justice Alito wrote.
“What officials did in this case was more subtle than the clumsy censorship declared unconstitutional in Vullo, but it was no less coercive,” he wrote. “And because of the high positions of the perpetrators, it was even more dangerous.”
He added: “Officials who read today’s decision along with Vullo will understand the message. If a coercive campaign is carried out with sufficient sophistication, it can succeed. That is not a message this court should be sending.”
