Free Speech Under Attack: SCOTUS Hands Biden Huge Win In His Effort To Censor Conservatives

Today’s leftists are quick to disparage the Supreme Court as dominated by far-right extremists, at least until the court delivers a decision that aligns with their agenda.

That happened this week with a decision siding with the Biden administration and reversing a lower court’s ruling that the federal government should not be permitted to pressure social media companies to suppress the free speech rights of their users.

As the Daily Caller reported:

The justices ruled 6-3 to reverse a lower court injunction barring the federal government from “coercing or significantly encouraging” social media companies to suppress speech, finding that plaintiffs did not have standing. The case, Murthy v. Missouri, was brought by the Republican attorneys general of Missouri and Louisiana, along with five individual plaintiffs whose own speech was censored.

“The plaintiffs rely on allegations of past Government censorship as evidence that future censorship is likely,” Justice Amy Coney Barrett wrote in the majority opinion. “But they fail, by and large, to link their past social-media restrictions to the defendants’ communications with the platforms. Thus, the events of the past do little to help any of the plaintiffs establish standing to seek an injunction to prevent future harms.”

Last July, District of Louisiana Judge Terry A. Doughty issued the initial injunction blocking a wide range of Biden administration officials from communicating with social media platforms for the purposes of censoring protected speech. The allegations in the case could be “the most massive attack against free speech in United States’ history,” he wrote, calling the government’s actions “Orwellian.”

As expected, many social media users bristled at the latest perceived attack on the First Amendment.

This is probably THE worst decision for the Supreme Court & the Rights of the People in decades.

Amy Coney Barrett & the big government justices have decided that subtle but powerful coercion by the fed govt to control private businesses and free speech is now OK in America. pic.twitter.com/U13ldszizG

— KrisAnne Hall, LibertyAddict (@RealKahall) June 26, 2024

🚨BREAKING NEWS JUST ANNOUNCED:

The US Supreme Court SCOTUS ruled 6-3 that the government is able to pressure Big Tech platforms to remove content.

RIP Free Speech 1776 – 2024🕯️ pic.twitter.com/CRLtmd3FUu

— AJ Huber (@Huberton) June 26, 2024

The First Amendment just took a hard body blow. The Supreme Court in the Murthy v Missouri case gave Joe Biden the license to censure his political opposition.

But we still have grounds to fight for Free Speech rights. This fight is not over. pic.twitter.com/HcRRJa5F3o

— Dan Schneider (@Schneider_DC) June 26, 2024

Justice Samuel Alito was among the three justices who dissented, and he made his opposition to the ruling known.

According to the New York Post:

In a blistering dissent, Alito warned that the actions of officials in the case were “blatantly unconstitutional, and the country may come to regret the Court’s failure to say so.”

“Purely private entities like newspapers are not subject to the First Amendment … But government officials may not coerce private entities to suppress speech,” he wrote. “The record before us is vast.”

Here’s some additional coverage of the landmark ruling: