Biden admin can’t be sued for pressuring social media companies to remove misinformation, Supreme Court rulesThe Supreme Court on Wednesday shot down a lawsuit against the Biden administration over its efforts to urge social media companies to take down alleged misinformation about Covid-19, election fraud and other topics.
Two red states and five social media users do not have legal standing to sue various federal officials over their communications with the tech platforms, the court held in a The court’s majority — which consisted of three conservative justices and three liberals — said that the role of the social media companies in establishing and enforcing their content-moderation policies meant the plaintiffs weren’t directly censored by the government. The majority also noted that the social media platforms were not named as defendants in the case.
“Without proof of an ongoing pressure campaign, it is entirely speculative that the platforms’ future moderation decisions will be attributable, even in part, to” the Biden administration officials who were named as defendants, Justice Amy Coney Barrett wrote in the majority opinion. The majority found that in fact the social media platforms were acting on their own to curate content — and had not been proven to be acting as agents of the government.