SCOTUS: Government censorship of Social Media OK...
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...if the censored item is "misinformation."
Who decides if it's misinformation? The government, of course.
But the case was decided, once again, not on its merits, but on "a lack of standing."
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/26/us/politics/supreme-court-biden-free-speech.html
The Supreme Court handed the Biden administration a major practical victory on Wednesday, rejecting a challenge to its contacts with social media platforms to combat what administration officials said was misinformation.
The court ruled that the states and users who had challenged the contacts had not suffered the sort of direct injury that gave them standing to sue.
The decision, by a 6 to 3 vote, left fundamental legal questions for another day.
“The plaintiffs, without any concrete link between their injuries and the defendants’ conduct, ask us to conduct a review of the yearslong communications between dozens of federal officials, across different agencies, with different social-media platforms, about different topics,” Justice Amy Coney Barrett wrote for the majority. “This court’s standing doctrine prevents us from exercising such general legal oversight of the other branches of government.”
Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr, joined by Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil M. Gorsuch, dissented.
“For months,” Justice Alito wrote, “high-ranking government officials placed unrelenting pressure on Facebook to suppress Americans’ free speech. Because the court unjustifiably refuses to address this serious threat to the First Amendment, I respectfully dissent.”
The case arose from a barrage of communications from administration officials urging platforms to take down posts on topics like the coronavirus vaccine and claims of election fraud. The attorneys general of Missouri and Louisiana, both Republicans, sued, saying that many of those contacts violated the First Amendment. -
The Supreme Court ruled 6-3 in favor of the Biden administration in a landmark case dealing with government involvement in social-media censorship, finding that the plaintiffs lacked the standing to sue.
Justice Barrett wrote the majority opinion asserting that two states and five social-media users do not have standing to contest the level of coordination between government agencies, nonprofits, and tech platforms in restricting content on social media.
“We begin—and end—with standing. At this stage, neither the individual nor the state plaintiffs have established standing to seek an injunction against any defendant. We therefore lack jurisdiction to reach the merits of the dispute,” the majority opinion reads.
The landmark Murthy v. Missouri content-moderation case came about from a lawsuit by Missouri and Louisiana against the Biden administration over federal agencies working with social-media platforms and third-party nonprofits to censor conservatives online.
Justice Samuel Alito issued a scathing dissent, accusing the nation’s highest court of failing to uphold its duty on an important free-speech case.
“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,” Alito said.
“If a coercive campaign is carried out with enough sophistication, it may get by. That is not a message this Court should send.”
Three doctors opposed to restrictive coronavirus lockdowns, Drs. Jay Bhattacharya, Martin Kuldroff, and Aaron Kheriaty, were plaintiffs in the case. They were represented by the New Civil Liberties Alliance (NCLA), a legal group that seeks to reduce the size of the federal government.
“The Government can press third parties to silence you, but the Supreme Court will not find you have standing to complain about it absent them referring to you by name apparently. This is a bad day for the First Amendment,” NCLA Senior Litigation Counsel John Vecchione said in a statement.
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@jon-nyc I said that in the third line of my post.
But the practical effect is the same as saying that it’s OK.
"Now look here, you Baltic gas passer... " - Mik, 6/14/08
The saying, "Lite is just one damn thing after another," is a gross understatement. The damn things overlap.
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@jon-nyc I said that in the third line of my post.
But the practical effect is the same as saying that it’s OK.
@George-K said in SCOTUS: Government censorship of Social Media OK...:
@jon-nyc I said that in the third line of my post.
Then you should have chosen a better thread title.
If social media companies agree then there’s no coersion. If they disagree and feel coerced they’d have standing and the opinion would surely go the other way.
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@George-K said in SCOTUS: Government censorship of Social Media OK...:
@jon-nyc I said that in the third line of my post.
Then you should have chosen a better thread title.
If social media companies agree then there’s no coersion. If they disagree and feel coerced they’d have standing and the opinion would surely go the other way.
@jon-nyc said in SCOTUS: Government censorship of Social Media OK...:
Then you should have chosen a better thread title.
By refusing to hear the case because of lack of standing, SCOTUS did exactly that. If you don't prohibit something, you allow it.
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@jon-nyc said in SCOTUS: Government censorship of Social Media OK...:
Then you should have chosen a better thread title.
By refusing to hear the case because of lack of standing, SCOTUS did exactly that. If you don't prohibit something, you allow it.
@George-K said in SCOTUS: Government censorship of Social Media OK...:
@jon-nyc said in SCOTUS: Government censorship of Social Media OK...:
Then you should have chosen a better thread title.
By refusing to hear the case because of lack of standing, SCOTUS did exactly that. If you don't prohibit something, you allow it.
Not to get sidetracked, but isn't that like saying The Bible or Jesus condoned slavery because they don't condemn it?
I was only joking
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I'm not really acquainted with how important it is to be strictly vigilant about "standing", nor how often that vigilance is discarded by motivated courts. Without that information, I don't know whether I agree with this decision or not. But as a big fan of free speech, and as someone who knows how easily your typical human discards that principle when motivated by "existential threats", I would have loved to see this case decided on its merits.
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Regarding whether this decision is tantamount to the court saying censorship is ok, I think an important distinction is that no precedent was established on any merit of the case either way. It's like a mistrial rather than a finding of guilt or not-guilt. So, the merits can be retried some other time, when this sort of censorship is actually coercive, and does some specific harm.
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@George-K said in SCOTUS: Government censorship of Social Media OK...:
@jon-nyc said in SCOTUS: Government censorship of Social Media OK...:
Then you should have chosen a better thread title.
By refusing to hear the case because of lack of standing, SCOTUS did exactly that. If you don't prohibit something, you allow it.
Not to get sidetracked, but isn't that like saying The Bible or Jesus condoned slavery because they don't condemn it?
@Doctor-Phibes said in SCOTUS: Government censorship of Social Media OK...:
isn't that like saying The Bible or Jesus condoned slavery because they don't condemn it?
No.
It's like saying "There's no speed limit, drive as fast as you want."
Lack of prohibition is permission.
@Horace said in SCOTUS: Government censorship of Social Media OK...:
It's like a mistrial rather than a finding of guilt or not-guilt. So, the merits can be retried some other time, when this sort of censorship is actually coercive, and does some specific harm.
Good point. It never was adjudicated, so the precedent stands.
