Attorneys: High Court Upheld 'Censorship Industrial Complex'

After the U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday declined to impose limits on the way President Joe Biden's administration is permitted to communicate with social media platforms, the plaintiffs' attorneys said the decision enables "the censorship industrial complex."

The 6-3 ruling rejected the plaintiffs' challenge made on free speech grounds to how officials encouraged the removal of posts deemed misinformation, including about elections and COVID-19.

"The majority of the Supreme Court has declared open season on Americans' free speech rights on the internet," said attorney John Vecchione of New Civil Liberties Alliance (NCLA), the plaintiffs' legal counsel, in a statement.

"The Supreme Court majority has practically erased the First Amendment and permitted government to co-opt private entities, like social media platforms, to accomplish its censorship aims," NCLA said in a press release. "The Framers recognized that the cure for problematic speech is more speech.

"Nothing prevents government from using its own speech to explain why 'misinformation' is wrong. The Court's ruling will make it far easier for the government to censor speech it doesn't like and far harder for affected interests to oppose that censorship, which is anathema to the Constitution," NCLA continued.

"This decision enabling the censorship industrial complex will have grave consequences for years to come. Missouri v. Murthy will now return to the lower courts for further proceedings."

Justice Amy Coney Barrett wrote in the opinion for the court that the states and other parties did not have the legal right, or standing, to sue.

Barrett wrote that the lawsuit had improperly asked the court "to conduct a review of the yearslong communications between dozens of federal officials, across different agencies, with different social-media platforms, about different topics. This Court's standing doctrine prevents us from exercising such general legal oversight of the other branches of Government."

She also added that the prosecution failed to demonstrate how the Biden administration coerced social media companies to restrict the plaintiffs' speech.

"The primary weakness in the record of past restrictions is the lack of specific causation findings with respect to any discrete instance of content moderation," Barrett wrote. "Complicating the plaintiffs' effort to demonstrate that each platform acted due to Government coercion, rather than its own judgment, is the fact that the platforms began to suppress the plaintiffs' COVID-19 content before the defendants' challenged communications started."

Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Brett Kavanaugh, Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson signed onto the opinion. Justices Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch and Clarence Thomas dissented.

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said, according to The Wall Street Journal, that the decision helps ensure the Biden administration "can continue our important work with technology companies to protect the safety and security of the American people, after years of extreme and unfounded Republican attacks on public officials who engaged in critical work to keep Americans safe."

• Sen. Eric Schmitt: Murthy v. Missouri 'Huge Win for America'
• Rep. Jordan Decries Supreme Court's Murthy Ruling