On Wednesday, a majority of the United States Supreme Court ruled in Murthy v. Missouri that the plaintiffs in the case lacked standing to challenge federal officials who pressured social media companies to censor and restrict content government officials had problems with.
The case was spearheaded by then-Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt, who argued federal officials wrongly and systematically violated the free speech rights of Americans on social media platforms by contacting and meeting with representatives of social media companies for the specific purposes of removing or restricting content they didn’t like.
Last year, federal Judge Terry A. Doughty sided with the plaintiffs, finding that, “The Plaintiffs are likely to succeed on the merits in establishing that the Government has used its power to silence the opposition. Opposition to COVID-19 vaccines; opposition to COVID-19 masking and lockdowns; opposition to the lab-leak theory of COVID-19; opposition to the validity of the 2020 election; opposition to President Biden’s policies; statements that the Hunter Biden laptop story was true; and opposition to policies of the government officials in power. All were suppressed. It is quite telling that each example or category of suppressed speech was conservative in nature. This targeted suppression of conservative ideas is a perfect example of viewpoint discrimination of political speech.”
However, a majority of the Supreme Court was unpersuaded that any of the particular plaintiffs in the case could demonstrate that they specifically were harmed as a direct result of the federal government’s jawboning efforts.
Justice Samuel Alito dissented, joined by Justices Neal Gorsuch and Clarence Thomas, arguing that, given the evidence of wrongdoing by the federal government at hand, “this is one of the most important free speech cases to reach this court in years.”
He continued, “The record before us is vast. It contains evidence of communications between many different government actors and a variety of internet platforms, as well as evidence regarding the effects of those interactions on the seven different plaintiffs.”
The pressure of the federal government on platforms like Facebook was clearly established by the record available. As Alito noted, “internet platforms have a powerful incentive to please important federal officials, and the record in this case shows that high-ranking officials skillfully exploited Facebook’s vulnerability. When Facebook did not heed their requests as quickly or as fully as the officials wanted, the platform was publicly accused of ‘killing people’ and subtly threatened with retaliation. Not surprisingly these efforts bore fruit.”
With the refusal of a majority of the Supreme Court to directly confront this, federal officials the court sidestepped an opportunity to defend free speech against unacceptable federal overreach.
As noted by Reason Magazine’s Robby Soave, “While this case was before the Court, government agencies had dramatically scaled back their communications with social media platforms… But for now, the verdict in Murthy v. Missouri is a big, flashing green light that jawboning may resume. That’s a discouraging development for free speech online.”
While we can hope that federal officials don’t overstep their authority and resume their censorious campaign, we know they will. It is almost certain that a future case will come challenging such efforts again. Perhaps at that time the high court will side with the free speech rights of Americans.