A US court has clamped down on Biden administration efforts to censor speech via social media companies
The Biden administration’s effort to stamp out ‘misinformation’ on social media looks set for an historic showdown in the Supreme Court after a US federal court ruling.
The Biden administration’s effort to stamp out ‘misinformation’ on social media looks set for an historic showdown in the Supreme Court after a US federal court ruled the White House, FBI and other agencies unconstitutionally trampled on Americans’ free speech rights during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Three judges on the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit sided with a lower court’s July Judgement that the US government had “coerced” and “significantly encouraged” Facebook, Twitter and other platforms to remove or throttle posts about Covid-19, lockdowns, vaccines, the Hunter Biden laptop story and the 2020 election result.
A group of public health academics and the states of Missouri and Louisiana brought the case last year, claiming various arms of the US government had breached their First amendment of the US constitution, which prevents the government from censoring speech, even via third parties if sufficient pressure is applied.
The 74 page Judgement, issued on Friday (Saturday AEST) said the court had “rarely been faced with a co-ordinated campaign of this magnitude orchestrated by federal officials that jeopardised a fundamental aspect of American life”, issuing an injunction to stop the interference pending a likely appeal by the Biden administration.
“Unrelenting pressure from certain government officials likely had the intended result of suppressing millions of protected free speech postings by American citizens,” the three judges concluded, paving the way for an expected Supreme Court showdown if the government, as expected, appeals.
The court found officials including the Surgeon General, White House press secretary and other staff “coerced the platforms into direct action via urgent, uncompromising demands to moderate content”, often with veiled threats about retaliation if the platforms didn’t comply.
Posts of the plaintiffs that were removed at government behest included claims Covid-19 came from a lab in Wuhan, that masks were ineffective, that lockdowns were excessively costly, that vaccine mandates were wrong, that Covid-19 vaccines didn’t stop transmission or led to health risks for young people.
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The judges found “persistent and angry” communications between government officials and social media companies went beyond simple recommendations, citing such instructions from officials to remove posts ‘ASAP’ or ‘immediately’, and “subtly insinuating it would be in the platforms’ best interests to comply”.
The verdict was a further setback for Biden administration efforts to tamp down on ‘misinformation’ after it dissolved a short-lived Disinformation Governance Board, based in the department of homeland security, in 2022 following public outcry.
“This Administration has promoted responsible actions to protect public health, safety, and security when confronted by challenges like a deadly pandemic and foreign attacks on our elections,” a White House official said in a statement in response to the latest ruling.
“Our consistent view remains that social media platforms have a critical responsibility to take account of the effects their platforms are having on the American people, but make independent choices about the information they present.”
Jenin Younes, a lawyer with the New Civil Liberties Alliance, an organisation that helped the plaintiffs, said the ruling was “a major and unprecedented victory” that had “stopped government from outsourcing censorship to private industry”.
“The importance of this decision cannot be overstated: it safeguards Americans‘ constitutional free speech rights in the digital age, when social media is the equivalent of the public square,” she told The Australian.
The decision comes amid efforts by numerous governments throughout the developed world, including in Australia and the UK, to introduce new laws to suppress speech on social media that bureaucracies consider incorrect or damaging.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg in June complained that the US government had “asked for a bunch of things to be censored that, in retrospect, ended up being more debatable or true”.
Twitter founder Jack Dorsey in 2021 told congress the company had made a “total mistake” by barring users from sharing the New York Post’s bombshell October 2020 story about Hunter Biden’s laptop, an act Republicans say influenced the presidential election in Mr Biden’s favour.
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