Judge Blocks Biden Administration From Influencing Social Media

NEW ORLEANS — A federal judge in Louisiana on Tuesday ordered the Biden administration and federal agencies to stop trying to influence posts on social media platforms.

The president and some members of Congress have called for a regulatory crackdown on social media for posts that spread dangerously inaccurate information about the COVID-19 pandemic and may have helped incite the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the Capitol. 

The judge said that although the Biden administration might have been trying to protect the public, it was violating the First Amendment free speech rights of people who posted the information. He called it government censorship.

The lawsuit filed by attorneys general in Missouri and Louisiana said the Biden administration also tries to prevent stories on social media about alleged financial improprieties by presidential son Hunter Biden and complaints about the security of mail-in ballots.

U.S. District Judge Terry A. Doughty said in his order that the federal government’s effort to “suppress alleged disinformation,” especially about the COVID-19 pandemic, “arguably involves the most massive attack against free speech in United States’ history.”

He added, “Although the censorship alleged in this case almost exclusively targeted conservative speech, the issues raised herein go beyond party lines. The right to free speech is not a member of any political party and does not hold any political ideology.”

The case appears to be related to efforts in Congress and by President Joe Biden that would revise Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. It says interactive computer service providers, such as social media, are not publishers. They are merely hosts of publications created by their users.

As a result, the social media companies are not liable for the posts of other persons, even when the information is inflammatory or inaccurate.

Nevertheless, as private companies, they still have a right to moderate the content on their platforms.

Critics of the companies accuse them of moderating the content poorly, sometimes endangering people who read it, and believe the inaccuracies are true. An often-cited example was disinformation early in the COVID-19 pandemic saying masks were ineffective in stopping spread of the virus.

The U.S. Department of Health said the inaccurate information might have led to hundreds or thousands of deaths among the more than 1 million Americans killed by the virus. It also prompted Congress to conduct hearings on whether to revise Section 230.

Facebook, Twitter and other sites responded by being more vigilant in blocking any information that might create a backlash against them.

The Louisiana judge called the actions that led to their hyper-vigilance censorship.

“During the COVID-19 pandemic, a period perhaps best characterized by widespread doubt and uncertainty, the United States government seems to have assumed a role similar to an Orwellian ‘Ministry of Truth,'” the 155-page court order says.

Doughty’s injunction orders the U.S. Departments of Justice, State, Homeland Security and Health and Human Services, the FBI and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention from communicating with social media platforms “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 court order listed phone calls, emails and press conferences by the Biden administration that the judge said “intimidated” the social media companies. It also mentioned videos and posts YouTube, Facebook, Reddit and Twitter removed that it said served as examples of censorship.

Some of the misinformation that was posted impersonated Anthony Fauci, former head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

The White House filed a motion to oppose the injunction in May that said the lawsuit by Missouri and Louisiana was based on a “far-ranging conspiracy theory.” It accused the plaintiffs of overlooking the public health emergency of the pandemic and government efforts to protect against “hostile foreign assaults on critical election infrastructure.”

The White House also called accusations of coercion exaggerated because social media companies could ignore the government’s concerns but continue to operate independently.

The case is Missouri et al. v. Biden et al in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Louisiana.

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