Supreme Court Sides With White House In Case Challenging Government Efforts To Curb Social Media Disinformation

The Supreme Court sided with the White House in a challenge to the administration’s efforts to curb disinformation on social media.

In a 6-3 ruling, the justices ruled that two states and five social media users lacked standing to show that First Amendment rights were violated as Biden administration officials called on social media platforms to stem disinformation about the Covid vaccine, among other things.

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“To establish standing, the plaintiffs must demonstrate a substantial risk that, in the near future, they will suffer an injury that is traceable to a Government defendant and redressable by the injunction they seek,” Justice Amy Coney Barrett wrote in the majority opinion. “Because no plaintiff has carried that burden, none has standing to seek a preliminary injunction.”

Barrett put particular emphasis on causation.

“As already discussed, the platforms moderated similar content long before any of the Government defendants engaged in the challenged conduct,” she wrote. “In fact, the platforms, acting independently, had strengthened their pre-existing content moderation policies before the Government defendants got
involved. For instance, Facebook announced an expansion of its COVID–19 misinformation policies in early February 2021, before White House officials began communicating with the platform. And the platforms continued to exercise their independent judgment even after communications with the defendants began.”

Read the social media opinion.

Barrett was joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, Brett Kavanaugh and Ketanji Brown Jackson.

The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals had held that federal government officials, “by ‘coerc[ing]’ or ‘significantly encourag[ing]’ social media platforms to curb misinformation, had essentially made those content moderation decisions government actions. A district court injunction was modified to limit the government’s interactions with social media platforms.

The case already has had the effect of curtailing efforts to limit such interactions in advance of the 2024 elections, while social media giants like Meta have de-emphasized political content in general.

The case — Murthy vs. Missouri — also touched on government contacts with social media platforms in advance of the 2020 elections, pre-dating the Biden administration, as well as the midterms in 2022.

“The plaintiffs rely on allegations of past Government censorship as evidence that future censorship is likely. But they fail, by and large, to link their past social-media restrictions to the defendants’ communications with the platforms. Thus, the events of the past do little to help any of the plaintiffs establish standing to seek an injunction to prevent future harms.”

The justices pointed to faults in a number of arguments of the defendants. In the case of Jim Hoft, who claimed that his website, The Gateway Pundit, was censored by Twitter as it tried to report on Hunter Biden’s infamous laptop. Hoft’s post was titled “Where’s Hunter? How is Hunter Celebrating the New Year? New Photos of Hunter Biden Pushing Drugs on Women Emerge.”

But in the majority opinion, Barrett noted that “Hoft’s own declaration reveals that Twitter acted according to its ‘rules against posting or sharing privately produced/distributed intimate media of someone without their express consent.’ Hoft provides no evidence that Twitter adopted a policy against posting private, intimate content in response to the FBI’s warnings about hack-and-leak operations.”

Barrett also noted that it was Hoft’s brother, Joe Hoft, who posted the tweet and saw his account suspended.

“It is unclear why Jim Hoft would have standing to sue for his brother’s injury,” the justice wrote.

In a dissenting opinion, Justice Samuel Alito wrote that the majority “permits the successful campaign of coercion in this case to stand as an attractive model for future officials who want to control what the people say, hear, and think.”

Alito cited President Joe Biden’s claim that social media platforms were “killing people” as misinformation spread. Days later, he backed away from the criticism.

Alito wrote, “When Facebook did not heed their requests as quickly or as fully as the officials wanted, the platform was publicly accused of ‘killing people’ and subtly threatened with retaliation. Not surprisingly these efforts bore fruit. Facebook adopted new rules that better conformed to the officials’ wishes, and many users who expressed disapproved views about the pandemic or COVID–19 vaccines were ‘deplatformed’ or otherwise injured.”

More to come.

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