Supreme Court lifts restrictions on Biden administration communications with social media companies

[Brian Brooks]

In article <uosu41$26qid$1...@dont-email.me>

The Supreme Court on Friday lifted restrictions on the Biden
administration’s communications with social media companies while a
lawsuit targeting the government’s efforts to combat online
misinformation plays out.

The court’s move pauses rulings from a federal trial court and a
conservative appeals court that severely limited the ability of the
White House, the surgeon general, the US Centers for Disease Control
and Prevention, the FBI and a top US cybersecurity agency to
communicate with social media companies about content related to
Covid-19 and elections the government views as misinformation.

A sweeping preliminarily injunction issued this summer by a federal
judge in Louisiana effectively blocked a slew of federal agencies
and administration officials from communicating with social media
companies about taking down “content containing protected free
speech” posted on the platforms.

In agreeing to pause the rulings on Friday, the high court also said
it would take up the case, though it didn’t say when it would hear
oral arguments in the dispute.

Conservative Justices Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch and Clarence Thomas
said they disagreed with the court’s decision to pause the lower
court rulings.

“The upshot is that the Biden administration gets to keep on doing
whatever it’s doing with regard to communicating with social media
companies until and unless the Supreme Court rules against it on the
merits,” said Steve Vladeck, CNN Supreme Court analyst and professor
at the University of Texas School of Law.

In the five-page dissent, the conservatives criticized the court’s
decision to take up the case while it was still in an early phase
and called the court’s decision to pause the rulings “highly
disturbing.”

“At this time in the history of our country, what the Court has
done, I fear, will be seen by some as giving the Government a green
light to use heavy-handed tactics to skew the presentation of views
on the medium that increasingly dominates the dissemination of
news,” Alito wrote in the dissent. “That is most unfortunate.”

https://www.cnn.com/2023/10/20/politics/supreme-court-social-
media/index.html