Supreme Court Rejects Suit Claiming Biden Administration Censored Social Media – WSJ

The Supreme Court on Wednesday rejected a lawsuit alleging that Biden administration officials unlawfully pressured social-media platforms to remove content flagged as disinformation, ruling that neither the two states nor five private parties who brought the claim had any right to get their allegations before a judge.

The lawsuit, spearheaded by Republican state attorneys general in Missouri and Louisiana, had fared well in the lower courts, at one point resulting in an unprecedented injunction that blocked top government officials from communicating with social-media companies about removing content containing protected free speech from their platforms.

The states claimed executive branch officials for years pressured digital platforms to censor conservative speakers. That campaign reached a fever pitch in 2021, they alleged, after President Biden took office and sought to promote Covid-19 vaccines and counter former President Donald Trump s claims that the election was rigged.

The Supreme Court, in a 6-3 decision written by Justice Amy Coney Barrett, said the plaintiffs failed to show they were directly harmed or faced the risk of future harm by the alleged actions of Biden administration officials.

The lawsuit improperly asked the court to conduct a review of the yearslong communications between dozens of federal officials, across different agencies, with different social-media platforms, about different topics, Barrett wrote. This Court s standing doctrine prevents us from exercising such general legal oversight of the other branches of Government.

The ruling crossed ideological lines. Two of Barrett s fellow conservatives, Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Brett Kavanaugh, joined her ruling, as did the court s three liberal justices, Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson.

Three other conservatives dissented. Justice Samuel Alito, joined by Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch, said the government s conduct was blatantly unconstitutional.

via www.wsj.com

This gets 3 out of a possible four “Ai chihuahua”‘s. That’s pretty bad. I’m still looking for appropriate emojis.