On Friday, the US Supreme Court ruled that the Biden administration can temporarily go on communicating with social media companies about their moderation policies. This ruling, standing in for a lower court ruling, halts for now the prevention of communication between a select group of Executive Branch officials and social media companies.
The majority’s order temporarily lifts the lower court stay and pronounces the order to be a grant of certiorari, extending the block until the Supreme Court has passed its judgement. Justices Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch and Clarence Thomas, however, strongly opposed the majority’s order. Justice Alito, penning the dissent, expressed fear that this may be perceived by some as a nod to government use of aggressive tactics to influence the representation of views on a medium that increasingly commands news dissemination.
The case stems from an original lawsuit filed in 2022 in federal district court by the states of Missouri and Louisiana. The lawsuit alleged that the administration of President Joe Biden had posts critical of its COVID-19 policies removed from social media, infringing on the residents’ First Amendment rights. In July 2023, a judgment by District Court Judge Terry Doughty sided with the plaintiffs, ordering a stop on communications between multiple executive branch organizations and social media companies.
After an appeal by the federal government, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals confirmed most of the district court ruling in September but limited the order to a smaller cohort of Executive Branch officials. The US government then appealed the case to the Supreme Court, which temporarily halted the injunction while the court pondered whether to hear the case.
Following the Supreme Court’s temporary halt of the injunction, the plaintiffs returned to the appeals court, asking that parts of the original injunction the appeals court had blocked be reinstated. The appeals court issued a new injunction on October 3, restoring parts of the lower court order that had previously been dismissed. This secondary injunction from October 3rd was what the Supreme Court temporarily obstructed on Friday.
The court is scheduled to hear this case as well as several others that highlight questions about the First Amendment and social media. On October 31st, the court is due to hear Lindke v. Freed and O’Connor-Ratcliff v. Garnier. These two cases will question whether public officials blocking someone on social media should be classified as state action under the First Amendment, and so, amounts to infringing on the individual’s freedom of speech who is blocked. Other cases to be heard originate from Texas and Florida, focusing on the state’s ability to regulate content moderation on privately owned social media websites.