SCOTUS Supports White House Regarding Social Media Company Engagement

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Facts

• The US Supreme Court (SCOTUS) on Wednesday threw out a conservative challenge to the Biden administration's efforts to work with social media companies to combat posts considered to be misinformation.¹
• The case — Murthy v. Missouri — was launched by officials from Louisiana and Missouri and five social media users who claim that the Biden admin.'s efforts to suppress content on social media, including its direct contact with tech industry officials, violated their First Amendment rights.²
• In a 6-3 decision, conservative justices Amy Coney-Barrett, John Roberts, and Brett Kavanaugh joined their three liberal colleagues. Writing for the majority, Coney-Barrett argued that previous censorship isn't evidence of future censorship and that the plaintiffs failed to 'establish standing…to prevent future harms.'³
• In the dissenting opinion, Justice Samuel Alito wrote that officials were coercive in their 'blatantly unconstitutional' actions.⁴
• The SCOTUS ruling overturns a federal appeals court's ruling that White House officials and the FBI had unconstitutionally coerced social media companies to take down content related to the 2020 presidential election and COVID vaccines.²

Sources: ¹USA Today, ²CBS, ³Daily Caller and ⁴CNN.

Narratives

• Republican narrative, as provided by Blaze Media. This decision is a complete erosion of free speech rights, as it allows the Biden administration to suppress whatever it deems 'misinformation.' The White House has already openly and proudly coordinated with big-tech companies to scrub platforms of dissenting opinions on a wide range of issues, which multiple courts ruled unconstitutional. Biden will now be further emboldened to silence his critics ahead of November's election.
• Democratic narrative, as provided by The Daily Beast. This decision will keep the internet safer and prevent dangerous lies from circulating the web unchecked in the face of the Republican-led effort to spread misinformation. That it came from the conservative-majority SCOTUS legitimizes the Biden administration's past work with social media companies and empowers it to resume working with the platforms — many of whom have voluntarily tightened their regulations around misinformation.

Predictions