Appeals Court: Biden Officials Broke First Amendment in Social Media Censorship
Federal Appeals Court Rules Against Biden Administration’s Coercion of Social Media Companies
A federal appeals court has delivered a significant blow to the Biden administration, ruling that it cannot coerce or “significantly encourage” social media companies to censor content. The court stated that such actions violated the First Amendment.
The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, in the case of Missouri vs. Biden, partially upheld a lower court’s ruling, barring the FBI, the Centers for Disease Control, the White House, and the surgeon general from pressuring social media companies to remove or limit content they disagreed with. This ruling specifically targeted officials like White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre and Surgeon General Vivek Murthy.
The court’s decision explicitly stated, “Defendants, and their employees and agents, shall take no actions, formal or informal, directly or indirectly, to coerce or significantly encourage social-media companies to remove, delete, suppress, or reduce, including through altering their algorithms, posted social-media content containing protected free speech.”
Recent documents released by Congress revealed that a White House official had asked Facebook to promote legacy outlets and suppress The Daily Wire’s reach, aligning with the administration’s COVID vaccine agenda.
The appeals court ruling, however, was not as expansive as the original ruling by U.S. Judge Terry A. Doughty. It did not uphold injunctions against the HHS, the Census Bureau, and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency.
In a meeting with Facebook, White House Digital Director Rob Flaherty expressed concerns about the impact of changing algorithms to favor authoritative news sources over outlets like The Daily Wire. Flaherty was one of the defendants affected by the injunction.
The Biden administration faced lawsuits from several states, including Louisiana and Missouri, who claimed that its actions constituted “the most egregious violations of the First Amendment in the history of the United States of America.”
Reactions to the Court’s Decision
Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey celebrated the ruling, stating, “The First Amendment remains intact. The first brick was laid in the wall of separation between tech and state on July 4th, and this ruling is yet another brick.”
Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry described the decision as “a major win against censorship, totalitarianism, and Biden.”
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