In a hugely consequential case, the Supreme Court sided (6-3) with the Biden Administration regarding how White House officials and other government officials communicate with social media companies regarding posts on their sites.
The opinion (Murthy v. Missouri) stated that the challengers did not have legal standing to even bring the case. The lawsuit was filed by Missouri and Louisiana and accused the Biden administration of violating the First Amendment by contacting and censoring people online – specifically posts related to public health and elections.
The 3 dissents were the expected whackjob right wing block of Gorsuch, Alito and Crow-Thomas.
The opinion was written by Justice Amy Coney Barrett and said that social media companies have long-standing content-moderation policies that place warning labels on certain posts and delete others. This is normal stuff, guys! Barrett added that the challengers could not prove that deletions were linked to the government.
She stated that the lower court got the ruling wrong by attributing decisions to the Biden administration, saying: “While the record reflects that the Government defendants played a role in at least some of the platforms’ moderation choices, the evidence indicates that the platforms had independent incentives to moderate content and often exercised their own judgment.”
Alito had a sadz, blaming the court for not seeing this for what it is: “an attractive model for future officials who want to control what the people say, hear and think.”
Funny footnote from ACB:
Read the full decision here.
On another interesting note, it looks like the Idaho abortion case opinion was live on the SCOTUS website for a few minutes…
Bloomberg reports that it appears, if the opinion is correct, that SCOTUS may allow abortions in Idaho in the case of medical emergencies to protect the health of the mother. This would be great news, but continues to open up discussion of what is “an emergency.”
