Supreme Court to hear case on free speech in social media

WASHINGTON (Gray DC) - The Supreme Court will hear a case Monday that could determine if the White House violated free speech rights when it asked social media companies to take down content that it deemed as misinformation.

The case could radically change how social media companies deal with everything from misinformation about COVID-19 to presidential elections.

While the Biden administration argues spreading certain speech is dangerous, others see its efforts as a serious violation of first amendment rights.

Murthy vs. Missouri stems from the COVID-19 pandemic when the Missouri and Louisiana Attorneys General filed a lawsuit against the federal government, claiming it pressured social media companies to censor conservative viewpoints about COVID and the presidential election.

Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-MO) called it the “most important free speech case in the history of our country.” He explained, “Because what it does is it alleges and then proves that big government colluded, coerced some of the biggest companies in the history of the world, big tech, these social media giants, to censor millions of American voices.”

As the former Missouri Attorney General, Schmitt led the original case and argues that the Biden administration was pressuring and coercing social media companies to silence the political speech of millions of Americans.

“So you saw this sprawling over, you know, a bunch of different agencies, different government actors working with social media companies again to silence speech. It’s un-American. And so I think it’s really important to stand up to that and make sure this stuff never happens again.”

Last year, a Louisiana district court sided with the attorneys general and said the federal government was coercing and encouraging social media moderation decisions. An appeals court revised some of that ruling, but the Biden administration later asked the Supreme Court to take up the case.

Now the court will have to decide on two constitutional questions, explained by Mary Pat Dwyer, Academic Program Director at the Georgetown Law Institute for Technology, Law & Policy.

“The first question is, is the government informally engaging in censorship in violation of the First Amendment? And then the second constitutional question is, does their relationship with the social media companies or in the social media companies themselves into state actors who are subject to the First Amendment?” She said.

According to Dwyer, it’s an important case both because the court hasn’t decided on informal censorship issues in a long time, but also because of the upcoming presidential election.

“We’re going into an election year and platforms are dealing with more and more volumes of information every year. So they need to have clear guidance on who they can and can’t communicate with and what those conversations can and can’t look like,” said Dwyer.

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