Supreme Court must rely on the First Amendment, not its own precedent, when deciding government censorship case – Washington Examiner

The justices of the Supreme Court never focused on the First Amendment s words when hearing arguments in Murthy v. Missouri last week.

The case challenges the federal government s orchestration of social media censorship, so one might have expected the justices to pay some attention to the First Amendment itself. Instead, the court relied on its own weak doctrines that invited the censorship in the first place.

The First Amendment makes a crucial distinction between abridging and prohibiting. But there s a danger the court, in this case, will ignore this and instead reinforce its erroneous coercion standard. If that s what the court does, it will give the executive branch the green light to persist in the most far-reaching censorship in the nation s history.

via www.washingtonexaminer.com

Phillip Hamburger.