The Supreme Court on Friday blocked in full a lower court ruling that would have curbed the Biden administration’s ability to communicate with social media companies about contentious content on such issues as Covid-19.
The decision in a short unsigned order puts on hold a Louisiana-based judge’s ruling in July that specific agencies and officials should be barred from meeting with companies to discuss whether certain content should be stifled.
The Supreme Court also agreed to immediately take up the government’s appeal, meaning it will hear arguments and issue a ruling on the merits in its current term, which runs until the end of June.
Three conservative justices noted that they would have denied the application: Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch.
It’s not a matter of “the president having the ability to remove social media posts”.
It’s more like “should government agencies be allowed to use the ‘report’ button?”
For example: Facebook has their own policies against violent hate incitement, COVID health fraud, and so on. They choose to have those policies; they’re not forced to by the government. If someone at the CDC sees a Facebook post that tells people to avoid vaccination and drink bleach instead, should they be allowed to report it to Facebook as a violation of Facebook’s rules? If someone at the State Department sees a Facebook campaign that incites people to commit genocide, should they be allowed to tell Facebook what their platform is being used for?
The plaintiffs’ argument was, roughly, “If a government agency tells Facebook about a violation of Facebook’s rules, that’s the government pressuring Facebook to silence someone’s speech, which is a First Amendment violation.”
That’s the argument the court rejected. Government agencies are allowed to use the “report” button just as much as anyone else. They’re allowed to communicate with social media sites about social problems such as hate incitement and health fraud. Doing so doesn’t constitute forcing Facebook to take down someone’s post.
By the way, this is also what the “Twitter Files” stuff was about: not government requiring Old Twitter to censor posts, but government agencies communicating with Old Twitter about things that were already in violation of Old Twitter’s rules.