5th Circuit 'glossed over complexities,' Supreme Court says in refusing to curb US social media contacts
Two states and five social media users don’t have standing to sue U.S. officials for alleged pressure against social media companies to curb protected speech, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled Wednesday. (Image from Shutterstock)
Two states and five social media users don’t have standing to sue U.S. officials for allegedly pressuring social media companies to curb protected speech, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled Wednesday.
The 6-3 opinion overturned a ruling of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals at New Orleans finding that the Biden administration violated the First Amendment by coercing and encouraging social media companies to remove alleged misinformation.
The opinion criticized the 5th Circuit’s approach and its reliance on a trial judge’s findings that appeared to be unsupported by the evidence.
“We begin—and end—with standing,” Justice Amy Coney Barrett wrote in the majority opinion. “At this stage, neither the individual nor the state plaintiffs have established standing to seek an injunction against any defendant. We therefore lack jurisdiction to reach the merits of the dispute.”
The plaintiffs had claimed standing based on censorship of their speech and their right to listen to the speech of others. Both theories are based on the actions of social media platforms, yet they did not seek to enjoin platform decisions, Barrett said. Rather, they sought to stop the government from acting.
Although the government played a role in some of the platforms’ decisions, the 5th Circuit went further in attributing every platform decision at least in part to the U.S. defendants. That finding “glossed over complexities in the evidence,” Barrett wrote.
Social media platforms had moderated content, including COVID-19 posts, long before government defendants got involved, and the platforms continued to exercise independent judgment afterward, Barrett said.
In a footnote, Barrett said the 5th Circuit relied on the district court’s factual findings, “many of which unfortunately appear to be clearly erroneous.” The lower-court judge in the case was Chief U.S. District Judge Terry A. Doughty of the Western District of Louisiana, who, like Barrett, is an appointee of former President Donald Trump.
As an example of an unsupported conclusion, the footnote cited Doughty’s statement that the U.S. defendants and the platforms had an “efficient report-and-censor relationship.”
The 5th Circuit also erred, Barrett said, by treating the litigants and the platforms “as a unified whole.” The plaintiffs have to demonstrate standing for each claim against each defendant. That requires a showing that “a particular defendant pressured a particular platform to censor a particular topic before that platform suppressed a particular plaintiff’s speech on that topic,” Barrett said.
Justice Samuel Alito dissented in an opinion joined by Justice Clarence Thomas and Justice Neil Gorsuch.
“If the lower courts’ assessment of the voluminous record is correct, this is one of the most important free speech cases to reach this court in years,” Alito wrote.
Focusing on just one of the plaintiffs, the director of a consumer advocacy group, Alito said the evidence “was more than sufficient” to establish her standing to sue.
In shirking its duty to rule on the merits, the majority “permits the successful campaign of coercion in this case to stand as an attractive model for future officials who want to control what the people say, hear and think,” Alito said.
The case is Murthy v. Missouri.
See also:
Did US violate First Amendment by pressuring social media? Supreme Court will decide
Chemerinsky: Expect another momentous year at the Supreme Court
