BREAKING: Supreme Court Greenlights Biden Admin. to Direct Social Media Censorship
6-3 majority rule in Murthy v. Missouri that neither the states nor other respondents had standing under Article III, reversing the Fifth Circuit decision.
This is a breaking story that will require followup with full legal analysis, but for now, the following is what we can say about the decision.
Until recently, most American citizens assumed that the Executive Branch was barred by the First Amendment from directing (by means of telephone calls and e-mails) social media companies to censor speech. The First Amendment reads:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
If Congress is prohibited from making a law that prohibits free speech, why is the Executive Branch authorized to infringe free speech by directing social media executives to do so in what is now the largest public forum in the Republic?
In Murthy v. Missouri (originally filed as Missouri v. Biden) Justice Amy Coney Barrett wrote for the majority, stating:
To establish standing, the plaintiffs must demonstrate a substantial risk that, in the near future, they will suffer an injury that is traceable to a government defendant and redressable by the injunction they seek. Because no plaintiff has carried that burden, none has standing to seek a preliminary injunction.
It’s strange for me to think that I, who hold a Master’s degree in political philosophy, have walked around for the last thirty years thinking that our civilization regards free speech as a self-evident good. Our Founding Fathers arrived at this conclusion from their study of history, from which it was evident to them that the harm of infringing free speech has been shown time and again to outweigh any theoretical harm that could occasionally arise from unbridled free speech. Thus, I find it astonishing that the respondents in Murthy v. Missouri are required to present concrete evidence of a specific harm suffered as a result of the Executive directing social media companies to censor their speech.
I thought it was understood that—in so far as “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” are held to be “inalienable rights”—citizens are self-evidently harmed by having their speech infringed by directives from the Executive branch.
Justice Samuel Alito wrote the dissent, joined by Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch. Alito wrote that the case “is one of the most important free speech cases to reach this Court in years." He stated that the respondents had brought enough evidence to suggest the government's actions were unconstitutional, but that "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. That is regrettable.”
In light of this regrettable decision, it appears to be game on for social media censorship.
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