Supreme Court Gives Gov’t Censors, Tech Surrogates a Major Win
Today’s Supreme Court decision in Murthy v. Missouri—not to mention the prematurely “leaked” pro-abortion decision in Moyle v. United States—was a major win both for federal government censors, especially the Biden administration, and the Big Tech surrogates that carry out the unconstitutional censorship.
There are many excellent legal analyses of the Murthy decision (including those linked below), which essentially claimed that the plaintiffs didn’t have standing, partly because there supposedly wasn’t sufficient evidence to prove government pressure had directly resulted in tech censorship of Covid-19 and election information. This is such a patently preposterous statement that it boggles the mind. Even if you haven’t been following the case and its manifold evidence for years, it is easy to access Murthy v. Missouri’s wealth of evidence showing government pressure to censor, and Big Tech employees agreeing to censor at government behest. Not only that, but an even more important point is that the government’s direct requests for censorship, alone and even without the context of their results, are completely in violation of the U.S. Constitution. The federal government has neither the right nor the ability to request censorship of free speech content, and even if no “coercion” was involved—which there was—on this fact alone, the Supreme Court ought to have taken action to stop government censorship efforts. This is especially true as the Biden administration is determined to use any means, including censorship, to rig the 2024 election.
In his well-crafted dissent from the majority opinion, Justice Alito wrote, “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. Officials who read today’s decision together with Vullo will get the message. If a coercive campaign is carried out with enough sophistication, it may get by. That is not a message this Court should send.” Unfortunately, that’s just what the Court did.
Another key point regards the false notion the majority SCOTUS justices seem to have that the federal government and tech companies are somehow separate entities. As of now, this is false. Big Tech companies are now merely government censorship surrogates, sharing data, trading employees, making cooperative strategies, communicating, sharing ideological goals, and almost without exception censoring exactly what and whom the government said to censor.
The idea that the Court seems to have that any consideration could possibly influence a tech company after the FBI or Biden White House (for example) aggressively requests censorship, other than this request, is ridiculous. But there is also plenty of evidence that government pressure did indeed result in election and Covid censorship. This is very dangerous as we head into another election; Dr. Robert Epstein (himself a Democrat) has a running tally of elections Big Tech companies have flipped, all of which were flipped in Democrats’ favor. And as Murthy v. Missouri argued, government officials, particularly from the Biden administration, are involved in ensuring such censorship happens.
I have linked to a few solid analyses of the decision’s implications below, and I also recommend reading Alito’s dissent.
Plaintiff Dr. Jay Bhattacharya: “The Supreme Court just ruled in the Murthy v. Missouri case that the Biden Administration can coerce social media companies to censor and shadowban people and posts it doesn't like. Congress will now need to act to enforce the Constitution since the Sup. Ct. won't…” Read the full thread on Twitter/X.
Legal expert Jeff Clark: “The Supreme Court wrongly booted the most significant First Amendment case in U.S. history on standing grounds today, Murthy v Missouri. And I say that as a true maven of standing doctrine. In effect, the Supreme Court majority is requiring government-private partnerships aimed at censorship to overlap entirely. If there are situations where private censorship predates and or postdates government calls for censorship, then the majority is saying the actions should be treated as independent and therefore to frustrate satisfaction of the causation and redressability prongs of standing analysis…” Read more on Twitter/X.
MRC VP Dan Schneider: “We have just witnessed a dagger in the heart of the First Amendment's right to free speech. The guarantee of our right to criticize government is lost…” Read the full thread on Twitter/X.
WATCH Article III Project’s “Mike Davis Reports On 6-3 SCOTUS Decision With Barrett, Kavanaugh, And Roberts Joining Liberals In Declaring No First Amendment Violations Took Place When Biden Admin Pressured Social Media Platforms Into Censoring Covid Information.”