The US Supreme Court is hearing arguments in a case that will decide whether the Biden administration’s communication with social media companies during the Covid-19 pandemic violated free speech.
The legal question: Whether the US government unconstitutionally pressured social media platforms into censoring users’ speech — particularly when the government flagged posts to the platforms that it believed violated the companies’ terms of service.
The Biden administration previously defended the actions in court, arguing channels of communication with social media companies must stay open so that the federal government can help protect the public from threats to election security, Covid-19 misinformation and other dangers.
How we got here: The states of Missouri and Louisiana, along with five social-media users, brought the lawsuit against various federal officials.
The district court and the federal appeals court found that the Biden administration “transformed private social-media platforms’ decisions to remove, demote, or label posts into state action that violated the First Amendment” when they discussed content with companies, according to a filing to the Supreme Court from the states.
In July 2023, a federal judge issued a preliminary injunction ordering federal agencies and more than a dozen top officials not to communicate with social media companies about taking down “content containing protected free speech.”
The Supreme Court paused that injunction from going into effect in October 2023 until it heard the case.
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