The Supreme Court delivered a surprising opinion on Wednesday, siding with the Biden administration and giving a kick in the face to conspiracy theorists and purveyors of disinformation.
Missouri, Louisiana, and five social media users sued U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy arguing that the government’s efforts to combat anti-vax and election disinformation in conjunction with social media platforms suppressed their freedom of speech and caused them harm.
The case, Murthy v. Missouri, argued that the Biden administration violated people’s First Amendment rights by communicating with social media companies about enforcing against covid and election-related disinformation. The crux of the argument was that a social media platform’s moderation actions, if enacted after being given recommendations by the federal government to do so, effectively become actions taken by the government via those platforms.
The case also argued that removing content that violates a platform’s content policies against disinformation causes harm to those spewing it and those wanting to bathe in the spew. The Supreme Court, in a 6-3 vote, found the plaintiff’s complaints lacked standing, reversing the opinion delivered by the Fifth Circuit. The Supreme Court ruled that the plaintiffs failed to produce any tangible harm (egos don’t count) from the government communicating with social media companies to moderate a firehose of garbage spewing out from conservative quacks.
“Attempting to satisfy this requirement, the plaintiffs emphasize that hearing unfettered speech…on social media is critical to their work as scientists, pundits, and activists,” Justice Amy Coney-Barrett wrote for the majority. “But they do not point to any specific instance of content moderation that caused them identifiable harm. They have therefore failed to establish an injury that is sufficiently “concrete and particularized.”
Flag-loving conservative justice Samuel Alito led in the dissent, joined by his fellow corrupt conservative Clarence Thomas and not-yet-corrupted Neil Gorsuch. Alito describes conspiracy-addled mouthpieces spewing Covid-19 disinformation as rebellious luminaries who “simply wanted to speak out on a question of the utmost public importance” and describes the case as “one of the most important free speech cases to reach this Court in years” where content moderation against anti-vax disinformation poses a grave threat to the “marketplace of ideas.”
Alito’s entire dissent is riddled with brainwormed chaos, claiming newspapers are able to publish whatever they want because they aren’t “subject to the First Amendment” (which is extremely not true) and that the government communicating with social media companies to take action against content that violates their own policies is “coercion.” Alito’s unbeatable dramatics go a step further as he claims that the majority opinion on the decision represents “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.” Phew.
This story has been updated.
