The Supreme Court has ruled against a group of conservatives who sued the Biden administration, claiming the White House violated the First Amendment by pressuring Facebook and other technology platforms to remove “disinformation.” The group failed to prove they suffered harm as a result of the administration’s efforts.

In its 6-3 ruling issued Wednesday, the Supreme Court said the individual and state plaintiffs in the case were not entitled to seek a preliminary injunction against federal executive branch officials and agencies over their official communications with social media companies about the spread of misinformation online.

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“Plaintiffs largely fail to connect their prior social media restrictions and defendants’ communications with the platforms,” ​​Justice Amy Coney Barrett wrote in her majority opinion.

Barrett’s opinion continued: “Plaintiffs, who have no specific connection between their injuries and Defendants’ conduct, are asking us to review years of communications among dozens of federal officials in different agencies, on different social media platforms, and on different topics. This Court’s settled doctrine prevents us from exercising such general legal oversight over the other branches of government.”

In 2022, Republican attorneys general in Missouri and Louisiana, along with five social media users, filed suit against the White House for reaching out to social media platforms and demanding that they remove certain misinformation. They alleged that Biden administration officials, through backroom channels, had “coerced” tech platforms into removing content that reflected views the administration disagreed with.

The Supreme Court ruling overturns lower court decisions that barred federal officials and agencies from working with technology companies to remove disinformation. Last year, Louisiana Federal District Court Judge Terry A. Doughty issued an initial ruling barring government officials from communicating with social media platforms. A three-judge panel of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals scaled back the injunction last fall, limiting its scope to agencies and individuals likely to have violated the First Amendment, including the White House, U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, the CDC, the FBI and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency.

The Supreme Court’s majority opinion said the Louisiana and Missouri plaintiffs “refer only to actions Facebook took against a Louisiana state official’s post about children and the COVID-19 vaccine. But they never say when Facebook took action against the official’s post – a crucial fact in establishing a causal connection. Nor have the three physician plaintiffs shown that their prior restrictions were due to White House officials or the CDC. They highlight restrictions imposed by Twitter and LinkedIn, but refer only to Facebook’s communications with White House officials.”

Supreme Court Justices Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch dissented.

“For months, senior government officials have applied relentless pressure on Facebook to suppress Americans’ free speech. Because the Court unjustifiably refuses to address this serious threat to the First Amendment, I respectfully dissent,” Alito wrote in his dissent. “Government censorship of private speech is inconsistent with our democratic form of government, and so today’s decision is deeply troubling.”

The Court’s decision in Murthy v. Missouri and the related dissent can be found at this link.

The Biden administration’s efforts to crack down on disinformation on social platforms are not censorship – but rather an attempt to make the platforms aware of the potential public harm that can be caused by the unchecked spread of falsehoods across their networks, says Nora Benavidez, senior legal counsel and director of digital justice and civil liberties at the advocacy group Free Press.

“In its ruling in Murthy v. Missouri, the Supreme Court did not address the question of whether the First Amendment limits government interference in private speech,” but the court majority “pointed out that platforms should have the freedom to regularly communicate with outside experts and officials on content moderation issues,” Benavidez said. She added, “There are critical moments when our government should be allowed, even encouraged, to contact private entities like social media platforms and provide them with factual information,” particularly around issues of foreign interference, election integrity, national security and incitement of violence.

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