No matter how you slice it, this is a loss for the First Amendment.
In a 6-3 decision, including all of the liberal judges as well as Kavanaugh and Barrett on the majority side, the Supreme Court has tossed a case that would have prevented government collusion with Big Tech to censor people's speech.
We've covered the Twitter Files, Facebook Files, and YouTube Files that show how Biden and the Deep State have coerced social media to censor speech that disagreed with the regime, especially around Covid. But today's ruling says that the 5th Circuit was WRONG to prevent collusion and that the plaintiffs (two state AGs and five social media users) did not have standing.
Trump-judge Amy Coney Barrett wrote the majority opinion.
She noted that social media platforms routinely moderated content even before the alleged coercion happened.
‘In fact, the platforms, acting independently, had strengthened their pre-existing content moderation policies before the government defendants got involved,' she added.
While the evidence shows government officials ‘played a role' in moderation choices, that is not enough to justify a sweeping injunction, Barrett wrote.
(So, I guess, the government's allowed to infringe a tiny bit on speech? As long as they're clever about it?)
While the majority was willing to toss this out over a "standing" issue, the stalwart conservatives on the court disagreed with the decision.
Check out some of Justice Alito's scathing dissent.
If the lower courts' assessment of the voluminous record is correct, this is one of the most important free speech cases to reach this Court in years ...
Of course, purely private entities like newspapers are not subject to the First Amendment, and as a result, they may publish or decline to publish whatever they wish. But government officials may not coerce private entities to suppress speech, see National Rifle Association of America v. Vullo, 602 U. S. 175 (2024), and that is what happened in this case ...
Alito continues to demonstrate how the majority got it wrong, showing that in just one of the plaintiff's cases (all that is required by law) the suit brought against the US Surgeon General's Office had more than enough legal standing.
As a result (the plaintiff) Hines was indisputably injured, and due to the officials' continuing efforts, she was threatened with more of the same when she brought suit. These past and threatened future injuries were caused by and traceable to censorship that the officials coerced, and the injunctive relief she sought was an available and suitable remedy. This evidence was more than sufficient to establish Hines's standing to sue, see Lujan v. Defenders of Wildlife, 504 U. S. 555, 561 - 562 (1992), and consequently, we are obligated to tackle the free speech issue that the case presents. The Court, however, shirks that duty and thus 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, along with Thomas and Gorsuch, see this case as what it is. A license for government actors to use their position of power to coerce private entities to enforce free speech violations.
Back to Alito:
That is regrettable. What the officials did in this case was more subtle than the ham-handed censorship found to be unconstitutional in Vullo, but it was no less coercive. And because of the perpetrators' high positions, it was even more dangerous. It was blatantly unconstitutional, and the country may come to regret the Court's failure to say so. Officials who read today's decision together with Vullo will get the message. If a coercive campaign is carried out with enough sophistication, it may get by. That is not a message this Court should send.
Let's not pretend like we don't know exactly what message this ruling sends:
So long, Facebook! So long, Instagram. I don't know how often you'll be reading our stuff on these websites anymore.
This is a bad day for the US.
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