The Supreme Court recently heard oral argument in one of the most important cases this term, one with critical implications for First Amendment free speech rights as society proceeds further into a world reliant upon internet service.
The controversy at the heart of Murthy v. Missouri is the Biden administration’s effort to pressure or “jawbone” social media to censor various opinions and public policy advocacy about the Covid pandemic that it found objectionable.
The Biden administration naturally claims it was simply engaging in discourse with social media leaders to “inform and persuade,” but discovered correspondence included direct threats against the companies while White House officials openly and publicly threatened new “legal and regulatory measures” if the targeted groups failed to submit to its desires.
Those revelations only confirm widespread suspicion that the left-leaning administrative state, favored and further empowered by the Biden administration, seeks to exploit its vast authority to suppress the speech of Americans who don’t share its preferred narratives or big-government goals.
The Supreme Court must now determine whether that White House pressure campaign crossed the line into unconstitutional intimidation and censorship, even without formal government prosecution or enforcement. Under applicable Supreme Court precedent, the Biden administration’s form of “informal censorship may sufficiently inhibit the circulation of publications to warrant injunctive relief,” even where the targeted groups are “free” to ignore its threats, because “people do not lightly disregard officers’ thinly veiled threats.”
More Government Censorship with ‘Net Neutrality’
The case assumes additional importance amid the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) attempt to resurrect the
