PREVIEW

Supreme Court Sides With Biden Administration in Social Media Case. Attorneys general in Louisiana and Missouri, and other right-wing individuals, previously brought a lawsuit against the government, alleging that it had influenced what social media companies allow on their sites. In particular, plaintiffs in the case of Murthy v. Missouri questioned whether the Biden administration violated free speech protections amid the pandemic when social networks were instructed to remove COVID misinformation. On July 4, 2023, Louisiana Judge Terry Doughty agreed with the plaintiffs and restricted members of the Biden administration from interacting with social media companies in an attempt to moderate their content. The U.S. Supreme Court struck down the lower court's ruling by a vote of 6-3 on June 26, 'The Guardian' reports. "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.", Justice Amy Coney Barrett, via majority opinion. Ultimately, Justice Amy Coney Barrett wrote that the lower court "glossed over complexities in the evidence" and "also erred by treating the defendants, plaintiffs and platforms each as a unified whole". Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch dissented. "For months, high-ranking government officials placed unrelenting pressure on Facebook to suppress Americans’ free speech.", Justice Samuel Alito, via dissenting opinion. "The Court, however, shirks that duty and thus permits the successful campaign of coercion in this case to stand as an attractive model for future officials who want to control what the people say, hear, and think.", Justice Samuel Alito, via dissenting opinion. THIS VIDEO MUST NOT BE EDITED FOR LENGTH TO COMBINE WITH OTHER CONTENT