Major setback in landmark trial on censorship

SCOTUS rules in favour of the Biden administration in Murthy v Missouri BUT it's not the end of the fight…

The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) has ruled in favour of the Biden administration in Murthy v. Missouri, a lawsuit that accuses federal officials of violating the First Amendment by coercing social media companies to remove or downgrade disfavoured content.

A quick recap

The case originated in 2022 when the attorneys general of Missouri and Louisiana, along with several individuals, filed a lawsuit claiming that federal officials, including Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, the FBI, and the White House, had engaged in an "unprecedented, sprawling federal censorship enterprise” by coercing social media platforms to remove content related to the 2020 presidential election, covid-19, and other topics.

In July 2023, a district court judge issued a preliminary injunction prohibiting the Biden administration and anyone "acting in concert with them" from communicating with social media companies “for the purpose of urging, encouraging, pressuring, or inducing the removal or reduction of content containing protected free speech.”

On September 8, 2023, the Fifth Circuit largely affirmed the district court injunction, stating the White House strong armed social media companies to censor material, using “mafiosi-style” tactics with an underlying threat it might enforce legal reforms to Section 230 which currently protects social media platforms from civil liability in US courts for content that appears on their platforms. Section 230 states:

No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.

This week’s SCOTUS decision effectively reverses the injunction.