Mar 25, 2024 05:10 PM
https://www.spiked-online.com/2024/03/24...er-before/
INTRO: ‘Your view has the First Amendment hamstringing the federal government in significant ways.’ It would be no surprise to hear such disregard for free-speech rights from the Biden administration today. Indeed, under Joe Biden, the US government has established a vast, multi-agency campaign to police content on social-media platforms and to pressure Big Tech to suppress views it dislikes. Last year, a judge declared Biden’s campaign against so-called disinformation to be ‘the most massive attack on free speech in United States history’.
But those words disparaging the First Amendment didn’t come from a Biden apparatchik. Shockingly, they came from a Supreme Court justice, Ketanji Brown Jackson. That is, from a member of the highest court in the land, the body that is tasked with protecting the constitutional rights of Americans, including their First Amendment rights to freedom of expression. ‘Hamstringing the federal government’ from censoring disfavoured views is precisely the point of the First Amendment.
Justice Jackson’s troubling words came earlier this week, as the Supreme Court met to hear oral arguments in Murthy v Missouri (formerly Missouri v Biden). This lawsuit claims that federal-government officials violated the First Amendment rights of certain states (Missouri and Louisiana) and individuals when they pressured social-media companies to remove posts about Covid vaccines, election fraud and other topics. Two lower courts have already ruled for the plaintiffs. In July of last year, US district judge Terry Doughty issued an injunction, requiring the government to cease communicating with social-media companies for the purpose of ‘urging, encouraging, pressuring or inducing’ them to remove or suppress ‘content containing protected free speech’. The Biden government has appealed those lower-court rulings, which is why the case has now landed with the Supreme Court.
Under the First Amendment, the government is generally prohibited from censoring speech it disagrees with. The principle at stake in Murthy v Missouri is that the government should also not be permitted to force private entities to do that work of censorship on its behalf. In other words, the Biden government should not be able to strong-arm Facebook, Google, X and other sites into suppressing political speech or other views that it opposes. Preventing the government from undertaking such indirect, behind-the-scenes censorship of social media is especially important today, as the digital square has become the main forum for public debate.
But according to the twisted logic of the Biden administration, it is the US government’s own speech rights – not the public’s – that are under threat. Solicitor general Elizabeth Prelogar told the court: ‘The government is entitled to speak for itself by sharing information, urging action and participating in debate over issues of great concern to the public.’ That’s true, the government can speak its mind to the media and seek to persuade them of its opinion. But Prelogar’s statement is a distorted, rose-tinted description of what the Biden government’s sprawling censorship regime got up to – its actions have gone far beyond ‘sharing information’, ‘urging action’ and ‘participating in debate’. Indeed, the plaintiffs’ brief presents ample evidence of how the Biden administration crossed the line from persuasion to coercion of social-media companies.
Yet, in this week’s Supreme Court hearing, it appeared that a number of justices were sympathetic to this ‘it’s just speech’ defence put forward by the Biden team. Some justices questioned whether the government officials had done anything unusual when they engaged with social-media companies, noting that there have been robust exchanges between officials and newspapers for decades. ‘I had assumed, thought, experienced government press people throughout the federal government who regularly call up the media and berate them’, said Justice Brett Kavanaugh.
But the scale and reach of the Biden officials’ anti-disinformation campaign went far beyond the kinds of interactions that government has long had with newspapers. The administration enlisted an array of agencies and officials in its censorship efforts... (MORE - details)
INTRO: ‘Your view has the First Amendment hamstringing the federal government in significant ways.’ It would be no surprise to hear such disregard for free-speech rights from the Biden administration today. Indeed, under Joe Biden, the US government has established a vast, multi-agency campaign to police content on social-media platforms and to pressure Big Tech to suppress views it dislikes. Last year, a judge declared Biden’s campaign against so-called disinformation to be ‘the most massive attack on free speech in United States history’.
But those words disparaging the First Amendment didn’t come from a Biden apparatchik. Shockingly, they came from a Supreme Court justice, Ketanji Brown Jackson. That is, from a member of the highest court in the land, the body that is tasked with protecting the constitutional rights of Americans, including their First Amendment rights to freedom of expression. ‘Hamstringing the federal government’ from censoring disfavoured views is precisely the point of the First Amendment.
Justice Jackson’s troubling words came earlier this week, as the Supreme Court met to hear oral arguments in Murthy v Missouri (formerly Missouri v Biden). This lawsuit claims that federal-government officials violated the First Amendment rights of certain states (Missouri and Louisiana) and individuals when they pressured social-media companies to remove posts about Covid vaccines, election fraud and other topics. Two lower courts have already ruled for the plaintiffs. In July of last year, US district judge Terry Doughty issued an injunction, requiring the government to cease communicating with social-media companies for the purpose of ‘urging, encouraging, pressuring or inducing’ them to remove or suppress ‘content containing protected free speech’. The Biden government has appealed those lower-court rulings, which is why the case has now landed with the Supreme Court.
Under the First Amendment, the government is generally prohibited from censoring speech it disagrees with. The principle at stake in Murthy v Missouri is that the government should also not be permitted to force private entities to do that work of censorship on its behalf. In other words, the Biden government should not be able to strong-arm Facebook, Google, X and other sites into suppressing political speech or other views that it opposes. Preventing the government from undertaking such indirect, behind-the-scenes censorship of social media is especially important today, as the digital square has become the main forum for public debate.
But according to the twisted logic of the Biden administration, it is the US government’s own speech rights – not the public’s – that are under threat. Solicitor general Elizabeth Prelogar told the court: ‘The government is entitled to speak for itself by sharing information, urging action and participating in debate over issues of great concern to the public.’ That’s true, the government can speak its mind to the media and seek to persuade them of its opinion. But Prelogar’s statement is a distorted, rose-tinted description of what the Biden government’s sprawling censorship regime got up to – its actions have gone far beyond ‘sharing information’, ‘urging action’ and ‘participating in debate’. Indeed, the plaintiffs’ brief presents ample evidence of how the Biden administration crossed the line from persuasion to coercion of social-media companies.
Yet, in this week’s Supreme Court hearing, it appeared that a number of justices were sympathetic to this ‘it’s just speech’ defence put forward by the Biden team. Some justices questioned whether the government officials had done anything unusual when they engaged with social-media companies, noting that there have been robust exchanges between officials and newspapers for decades. ‘I had assumed, thought, experienced government press people throughout the federal government who regularly call up the media and berate them’, said Justice Brett Kavanaugh.
But the scale and reach of the Biden officials’ anti-disinformation campaign went far beyond the kinds of interactions that government has long had with newspapers. The administration enlisted an array of agencies and officials in its censorship efforts... (MORE - details)