06/26/2024

SCOTUS Rules U.S. Government Can Keep Talking to Social Media Companies

The ruling overturns an earlier injunction

Today, the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) ruled in a 6–3 decision that the plaintiffs who'd sued the US government for allegedly violating the First Amendment—by communicating with social media companies about misleading and harmful content on their platforms—did not present enough evidence to prove that they had standing to sue.

The case was brought by the attorneys general from Louisiana and Missouri, who alleged that government agencies have had undue influence on the content moderation practices of platforms and coerced the platforms into taking down conservative-leaning content, infringing on the First Amendment rights of their citizens. Specifically, the case alleged that government agencies like the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) coerced social media companies into removing content, including posts that questioned the use of masks in preventing Covid-19 and the validity of the 2020 election.

In a May 2022 statement, Missouri attorney general Eric Schmitt alleged that members of the Biden administration “colluded with social media companies like Meta, Twitter and YouTube to remove truthful information related to the lab-leak theory, the efficacy of masks, election integrity and more." Last year, a federal judge issued an injunction that barred the government from communicating with social media platforms.

Please select this link to read the complete article from WIRED.