News/Commentary

Censorship concerns return as SCOTUS allows Biden admin to implore tech giants to combat controversial posts

October 21, 2023 | | Print Article

Remember how the Biden administration colluded with Big Tech to censor “misinformation” surrounding such things as election integrity, COVID-19, and Hunter’s laptop?

Well, the Supreme Court ruled on Friday that the president’s administration can, for the time being, continue right on doing it, blocking a lower court order that said otherwise.

The emergency appeal to the Supreme Court for the right to continue squelching unfavorable stories on social media came from the Biden administration, and Justices Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, and Clarence Thomas would have rejected it, according to Fox Business.

“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 dissent. “That is most unfortunate.”

But all is not lost.

The Supreme Court will hear Missouri v. Biden, the lawsuit that accused the Biden administration of trampling on the First Amendment by unconstitutionally censoring conservative viewpoints.

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The lawsuit alleges that “White House communications staffers, the surgeon general and the FBI are among those that coerced changes in online content on Facebook, X (formerly Twitter) and other media platforms,” Fox Business reports.

“Earlier this month, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals extended the scope of an injunction in place that limits the Biden administration’s communication with big tech companies to include the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) within the Department of Homeland Security,” the outlet explains.

Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar argued that the Fifth Circuit adopted too vague a definition of “coercion.”

“The Fifth Circuit erred in finding coercion by the White House, Surgeon General’s office, and FBI because the court did not identify any threat, implicit or explicit, of adverse consequences for noncompliance,” she wrote. “Indeed, the Fifth Circuit adopted a definition of coercion so lax that it deemed the FBI’s actions coercive simply because the FBI is a powerful law enforcement agency and the platforms sometimes (but not always) removed the content it flagged.”

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Michael Shellenberger, who was part of the team of independent journalists who exposed the government’s efforts to censor accounts on what was then Twitter, is hopeful that the Supreme Court will eventually rule in favor of the First Amendment.

“The media say the Censorship Industrial Complex is a conspiracy theory, but it’s not. It’s very real,” he wrote on X. “And now, the U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to hear the landmark Missouri v. Biden case, which may very well put an end to it.”


“The United States Supreme Court has granted cert in Missouri v. Biden — the nation’s highest court will hear the most important free speech case in American history,” said Republican Missouri Senator Eric Schmitt. “I’m proud to have filed this case when I was AG, and will always defend free speech.”


Missouri’s current Attorney General, Andrew Baily, is optimistic.

“We look forward to dismantling Joe Biden’s vast censorship enterprise at the nation’s highest court,” he stated.

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Melissa Fine
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