WASHINGTON — TheSupreme Courton Wednesday sided with the Biden administration in a dispute with Republican-led states over how far the federal government can go to combatcontroversial social media postson topics including COVID-19 and election security.
By a 6-3 vote, the justicesthrew out lower-court rulingsthat favored Louisiana, Missouri and other parties in their claims that officials in the Democratic administration leaned on the social media platforms to unconstitutionally squelch conservative points of view.
Justice Amy Coney Barrett wrote for the court that the states and other parties did not have the legal right, or standing, to sue.
"The plaintiffs, without any concrete link between their injuries and the defendants’ conduct, ask us to conduct a review of the years-long communications between dozens of federal officials, across different agencies, with different social-media platforms, about different topics. This Court’s standing doctrine prevents us from “exercis[ing such] general legal oversight” of the other branches of Government. TransUnion, 594 U. S., at 423–424. We therefore reverse the judgment of the Fifth Circuit and remand the case for further proceedings consistent with this opinion."
Justices Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch and Clarence Thomas dissented.
The case is among several before the court this term that affect social media companies in the context of free speech. In February, the court heard arguments overRepublican-passed laws in Florida and Texasthat prohibit large social media companies from taking down posts because of the views they express. In March, the court laid outstandards for when public officials can block their social media followers.
The cases over state laws and the one that was decided Wednesday are variations on the same theme, complaints that the platforms are censoring conservative viewpoints.
The states had argued that White House communications staffers, the surgeon general, the FBI and the U.S. cybersecurity agency are among those who applied “unrelenting pressure” to coerce changes in online content on social media platforms.
But the justices appeared broadly skeptical of those claims during arguments in March and several worried that common interactions between government officials and the platforms could be affected by a ruling for the states.
The Biden administration underscored those concerns when it noted that the government would lose its ability to communicate with the social media companies about antisemitic and anti-Muslim posts, as well as on issues of national security, public health and election integrity.
U.S. Sen. Eric Schmitt, who filed the Missouri case when he was Attorney General, and Andrew Bailey, his successor, both claimed a degree of victory despite the high court defeat.
“While this isn’t the outcome we were hoping for, this case is a huge win for Americans and for the whole country, because it exposed nearly every part of the Biden Administration’s vast ‘censorship enterprise'," Schmitt said.
"My rallying cry to disappointed Americans is this: Missouri is not done. We are going back to the district court to obtain more discovery in order to root out Joe Biden’s vast censorship enterprise once and for all,” Bailey said in a statement.
Bailey, who is running to the keep the job he was appointed to by Gov. Mike Parson, took criticism Wednesday from his GOP primary opponent and the only Democrat running in the race.
"Andrew Bailey keeps losing," Will Scharf, Bailey's primary opponent told Spectrum News. "Missouri deserves better representation in front of the Supreme Court."
Democrat Elad Gross said Bailey "should spend more time taking refresher courses on constitutional law and less trying to get on TV at our expense."
Bailey has scored legal victories, including at the Supreme Court on cases challenging Biden administration student loan foregiveness and border policies.
The Supreme Court had earlier acted to keep the lower-court rulings on social media censorship on hold. Justices Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch and Clarence Thomas would have allowed the restrictions on government contacts with the platforms to go into effect.
Free speech advocates had urged the court to use the case to draw an appropriate line between the government’s acceptable use of the bully pulpit and coercive threats to free speech.
A panel of three judges on the New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals had ruled earlier that the Biden administration had probably brought unconstitutional pressure on the media platforms. The appellate panel said officials cannot attempt to “coerce or significantly encourage” changes in online content. The panel had previously narrowed a more sweeping order from a federal judge, who wanted to include even more government officials and prohibit mere encouragement of content changes.
