The Supreme Court rules for Biden administration in a social media dispute with conservative states
WASHINGTON — The High Council sided with the Biden administration on Wednesday in a dispute with Republican-led states over how far the federal government can go in the fight against controversial posts on social media on topics such as COVID-19 and election security.
By a 6-3 vote, the judges has omitted rulings from lower courts who favored Louisiana, Missouri and others in their claims that Democratic officials leaned on social media platforms to unconstitutionally suppress conservative views.
Judge Amy Coney Barrett wrote for the court that the states and other parties did not have the legal right or authority to sue.
Justices Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch and Clarence Thomas dissented.
The case is one of several brought before the court this term affecting social media companies in the context of freedom of expression. The court heard the arguments in February Republican-passed bills in Florida and Texas which ban major social media companies from removing posts because of the views they express. The court announced in March standards for when government officials can block their social media followers.
The state law cases and the one decided Wednesday are variations on the same theme, complaints that the platforms are censoring conservative views.
The states had argued that communications officials from the White House, the surgeon general, the FBI and the U.S. Cyber Security Agency were among those who exerted “relentless pressure” to force changes to online content on social media platforms.
But the justices generally seemed skeptical of these claims during arguments in March, and several worried that common interactions between government officials and the platforms could be affected by a ruling for the states.
The Biden administration underscored these concerns when it noted that the government would lose its ability to communicate with social media companies on anti-Semitic and anti-Muslim messages, as well as on issues of national security, public health and election integrity.
The Supreme Court had previously acted to delay the lower courts’ rulings. Justices Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch and Clarence Thomas would have allowed the restrictions on government contacts with the platforms to go into effect.
Free speech advocates had urged the court to use the case to draw an appropriate line between the government’s acceptable use of the pulpit and coercive threats to free speech.
A three-judge panel of the New Orleans-based 5th US Circuit Court of Appeals had previously ruled that the Biden administration had likely exerted unconstitutional pressure on the media platforms. The appeals panel said officials cannot seek to “enforce or significantly encourage” changes to online content. The panel had previously limited a more sweeping order from a federal judge, who sought to involve even more government officials and ban merely encouraging substantive changes.
The case is Murthy v. Missouri, 23-411.
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