A federal judge on Monday halted the government from pressuring Big Tech companies to censor free speech on social media platforms.
This comes after two attorney generals from Louisiana and Missouri stood up against the Biden administration’s Orwellian leadership and filed a lawsuit to protect our constitutional rights.
“Evidence in this case overwhelmingly shows that the way the Government supposedly ‘prevent[s] grave harm to the American people and our democratic processes’ is to pressure and induce social-media platforms to censor disfavored viewpoints on COVID-19, elections, and other core political speech,” the lawsuit read.
“In the end, their position is fundamentally defiant toward the Court’s judgment. It demonstrates that the Government will continue violating First Amendment rights by censoring core political speech on social media as soon as it can get away with it. The motion to stay should be denied,” it continued.
U.S. District Judge Terry A. Doughty then ruled in the “Missouri v. Biden” case that the Biden administration has no right to put limits on government communications with social media platforms.
“Although this Preliminary Injunction involves numerous agencies, it is not as broad as it appears,” Doughty. “It only prohibits something the Defendants have no legal right to do—contacting social media companies for the purpose of urging, encouraging, pressuring, or inducing in any manner, the removal, deletion, suppression, or reduction of content containing protected free speech posted on social-media platforms.”
The ruling marked a win for free speech advocates, who called it a preservation of Americans’ First Amendment rights. It could also wind up being one of the federal court’s most important cases, especially in today’s political climate.
“This could be arguably one of the most important First Amendment cases in modern history,” Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry said. “If you look at the opinion that the judge lays out, he takes from our argument that this is basically one of the most massive undertakings of the federal government to limit American speech in the history of our country,” Landry, a Republican, continued. “The things that we uncovered, in this case, should be shocking, appalling, and concerning for all Americans.”
