On Monday, U.S. Supreme Court justices appeared unconvinced by arguments challenging the Biden administration’s encouragement of social media platforms to remove posts deemed misinformation about COVID-19 and elections, asserting that such actions violated free speech rights.
During oral arguments, the justices weighed the administration’s appeal against a lower court’s preliminary injunction that constrained communication between White House officials and major platforms like Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter over content moderation, Reuters reports.
The case, brought by Republican-led states Missouri and Louisiana along with five individual social media users, contends the government’s actions amounted to coercing platforms to unlawfully censor disfavored speech, in violation of the First Amendment.
However, the Biden administration has maintained that officials merely sought to flag hazardous falsehoods to companies, arguing the government has a right to “speak for itself” by informing, persuading, or criticizing private entities over content that contravenes their own policies.
“The government may not use coercive threats to suppress speech,” but it is entitled to “speak for itself,” Justice Department lawyer Brian Fletcher told the court.
The case examines whether the administration’s initiatives to counter online misinformation during the pandemic, which officials said was causing preventable deaths by undermining vaccination efforts, crossed constitutional lines from legitimate communication into impermissible censorship.
While justices appeared to voice skepticism over arguments alleging government overreach, they must determine where precisely the boundaries lie between permissible persuasion of private companies and unconstitutional suppression of free expression.
