Supreme Court to hear case against Biden censorship

 David Catron:

Late Friday, the Supreme Court agreed to hear Missouri v. Biden, a case that may end the Biden administration’s circumvention of the First Amendment by outsourcing censorship to Big Tech. The case was initially filed by the states of Missouri and Louisiana, along with various private plaintiffs who allege that social media platforms censored them at the behest of federal agencies. U.S. District Judge Terry Doughty ruled for the plaintiffs on July 4, enjoining the agencies from communicating with platforms about “content moderation.” The Biden administration sought relief from the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals and lost again, making a Supreme Court clash inevitable.

In September, the Biden administration filed Murtha v. Missouri asking the Court to stay Judge Doughty’s injunction pending the Court’s disposition of the administration’s forthcoming petition for a writ of certiorari. On Friday, the Court granted the application for stay and expedited the next steps in the process by treating that application as a petition for a writ of certiorari and granting it as well. Consequently, the original plaintiffs will be able to make their case before the Court. However, in the interim, the Biden administration will once again be free to collude with Big Tech to suppress disfavored views. This perverse state of affairs prompted Justice Alito, joined by Justices Thomas and Gorsuch, to write a scathing dissent:

This case concerns what two lower courts found to be a “coordinated campaign” by high-level federal officials to suppress the expression of disfavored views on important public issues … Today, however, a majority of the Court, without undertaking a full review of the record and without any explanation, suspends the effect of that injunction until the Court completes its review of this case, an event that may not occur until late in the spring of next year. Government censorship of private speech is antithetical to our democratic form of government, and therefore today’s decision is highly disturbing.

Alito is justly concerned that the Biden administration will view the order as “a green light to use heavy-handed tactics to skew the presentation of views on the medium that increasingly dominates the dissemination of news.” If the past is prologue, that is precisely how the Biden administration will see the ruling. Alito also noted that the order ignored the District Court’s “extensive findings of fact that spanned 82 pages” and that the Appeals Court agreed with its opinion that the plaintiffs were subjected to “a coordinated campaign … orchestrated by federal officials that jeopardized a fundamental aspect of American life.” (READ MORE from David Catron: The High Price of Historical Illiteracy)
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The Biden censorship was also clearly wrong and was used to push an unfounded agenda.  The Supreme Court should uphold the lower court's opinion.