Supreme Court rejects Missouri case that Biden administration censored social media posts

The U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday ruled that a group led by Missouri lacked the legal standing to challenge whether the Biden administration violated the First Amendment by urging social media companies to take down posts and ban social media accounts.

The case, brought by former Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt, former Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry and five people who say their social media posts were censored, focused on whether – and how – the federal government can communicate with social media companies to challenge posts that may conflict with the sites content policies.

With the dismissal of the case, the Biden administration will be able to continue urging social media companies to take down posts, as experts warn of misinformation and disinformation from foreign countries ahead of the 2024 presidential election.

While it largely focused on disinformation spread during the pandemic, the case could have had widespread impact on how the federal government can communicate with social media companies in an era where misinformation on social media runs rampant – and as Congress has increasingly discussed how to better regulate the tech industry.

Instead, the court ruled that the Fifth Circuit Court erred when it issued a sweeping injunction, limiting how the Biden administration could communicate with social media companies. The 6-3 decision, authored by Justice Amy Coney Barrett, said Missouri failed to prove that it was directly harmed by the Biden administration’s actions.

Barrett wrote that while the Biden administration – specifically the White House, the Office of the Surgeon General, the Centers for Disease Control, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency – did communicate with social media companies and ask them to take down posts based on the sites content moderation policies, the social media companies were also consulting other outside experts about how to moderate posts.

“This evidence indicates that the platforms had independent incentives to moderate content and often exercised their own judgment. To be sure, the record reflects that the Government defendants played a role in at least some of the platforms’ moderation choices,” Barrett wrote. “But the Fifth Circuit, by attributing every platform decision at least in part to the defendants, glossed over complexities in the evidence.”

Justice Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch dissented.

The case was first brought by former Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt and then championed by Andrew Bailey, who took office after Schmitt was elected to the U.S. Senate.

Bailey is in the midst of a competitive Republican primary for Attorney General, where he’s facing off against Will Scharf, an attorney who is on President Donald Trump’s legal team.

The high profile loss at the Supreme Court comes as Trump’s team is still waiting for the Supreme Court to decide whether Trump has legal immunity from actions he took while serving as President.

In a press release following the ruling, Bailey claimed the decision meant he should continue to pursue evidence that the Biden administration is using social media companies to censor speech.

“We will remain vigilant to build the wall of separation between tech and state, but I could not be prouder of what my team and this case has exposed so far,” Bailey said. “Missouri will continue to lead the way in the fight to defend our most fundamental freedoms.”

Schmitt has argued that regardless of the outcome of the case, the evidence was able to expose how the Biden administration communicates with social media companies — including bullying and cajoling through back channels when trying to encourage the sites to take down posts.

“While this isn’t the outcome we were hoping for, this case is a huge win for Americans and for the whole country, because it exposed nearly every part of the Biden Administration’s vast ‘censorship enterprise,’” Schmitt said in a written statement after the ruling.

“While exposing this censorship is a win, the fight is far from over. I promise that I will never stop fighting to ensure that Americans’ First Amendment rights are jealously guarded, and I will continue to work to dismantle every last facet of the Biden Administration’s censorship industrial complex.”

Schmitt and Bailey repeatedly portrayed the case as vital for free speech. Describing social media as the new “town square,” Schmitt has pushed back on the notion of disinformation and has criticized the government for censoring conservative speech.

The White House has argued that it was highlighting posts that violated the sites existing social media policies, and the Justice Department said communication with social media companies was vital for both domestic and national security.

In his dissent, Alito said the court shirked from its responsibility to decide an important issue of free speech — whether the government should be able to wield influence over what is and isn’t posted on social media.

“The Court, however, shirks that duty and thus permits the successful campaign of coercion in this case to stand as an attractive model for future officials who want to control what the people say, hear, and think,” Alito wrote. “That is regrettable.”