The wins just keep coming.
Remember when a federal judge banned the entire Biden administration from communicating with Big Tech platforms to censor Americans?
The Biden Administration appealed the decision. Democrats in high places have quite enjoyed their powers of censorship over the past few years; why would they give them up because of that pesky First Amendment?
However, they lost that appeal in a unanimous ruling from the Fifth Circuit court of appeals with the injunction largely left in place, though narrowed slightly.
For the most part, the federal government is forbidden from contacting any media company for the purpose of encouraging, suppressing, and censoring speech.
Defendants, and their employees and agents, shall take no actions, formal or informal, directly or indirectly, to coerce or significantly encourage social-media companies to remove, delete, suppress, or reduce, including through altering their algorithms, posted social-media content containing protected free speech. That includes, but is not limited to, compelling the platforms to act, such as by intimating that some form of punishment will follow a failure to comply with any request, or supervising, directing, or otherwise meaningfully controlling the social-media companies' decision-making processes.
Several branches were singled out as having expressly and illegally violated the first amendment rights of the plaintiffs in the case: namely the White House, the FBI, the office of the Surgeon General, and the CDC.
A host of specific names were singled out in the case as having violated the First Amendment, and topping the list is White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre.
You know the one keeping a close eye on Twitter now that Elon Musk took over and changed its name to X?
The mad lad must be loving this ruling out of the Fifth Circuit.
The next step if the Biden Administration appeals again is the Supreme Court, which may lump this case into two others that have petitioned the high court.
Those cases were brought by the media giants against Texas and Florida, who passed laws forbidding social media companies from censoring their states' citizens on their media platforms.
While the cases might have the same underlying issue of whether the state can compel a private company to remove or allow others' speech, the principles of the cases are diametrically opposed.
I guess we'll wait and see what happens.
Here's hoping we keep the freedom to say what we want in America.
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