On Monday, a U.S. District Judge from Louisiana denied the Justice Department’s request to stay an order limiting the Biden Administration’s ability to pressure social media companies to censor American citizens’ free speech rights.
Last week’s ruling comes in the wake of the infamous Twitter Files revelations that there was significant communication between the U.S. and the social media platform, in which the government pressured Twitter to censor anti-COVID-19 vaccines and anti-COVID-19 lockdown tweets, as well as other posts criticizing the administration narratives around the time of the 2020 election.
Plaintiffs, including Republican attorneys general in Louisiana and Missouri, are currently suing the Biden Administration over its apparent censorship-collusion with social media platforms. Last Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Terry Doughty, issued a preliminary injunction that would ban federal agencies and officials from communicating with social media companies.
In response, Biden Administration attorneys asked Doughty to stay his own order while they pursued an appeal. But, in Monday’s ruling, Judge Doughty rejected the request, on multiple grounds.
In denying the stay on Monday, Judge Doughty ruled that the preponderance of evidence suggests that the Biden Administration did, in fact, coerce, encourage and help social media companies to censor speech protected by the First Amendment:
“Plaintiffs are likely to prove that all of the enjoined Defendants coerced, significantly encouraged, and/or jointly participated social-media companies to suppress social-media posts by American citizens that expressed opinions that were anti-COVID-19 vaccines, anti-COVID-19 lockdowns, posts that delegitimized or questioned the results of the 2020 election, and other content not subject to any exception to the First Amendment.
“These items are protected free speech and were seemingly censored because of the viewpoints they expressed.”
Likewise, while the Justice Department claimed the injunction was “too broad,” Judge Doughty ruled that the government isn’t entitled to a delay - because last week’s ban only prevents the Biden Administration from doing something it never had the right to do in the first place: communicate with social media companies to violate citizens’ constitutionally-guaranteed right to free speech.
As Judge Doughty explains in his ruling:
“Although this Preliminary Injunction involves numerous agencies, it is not as broad as it appears.
“It only prohibits something the Defendants have no legal right to do—contacting social-media companies for the purpose of urging, encouraging, pressuring, or inducing in any manner, the removal, deletion, suppression, or reduction of content containing protected free speech posted on social-media platforms. It also contains numerous exceptions.”