Report from Reuters
In Brief – The Trump Administration has reached a legal settlement that restricts three federal agencies from pressuring social media companies to remove or limit content, ending a legal battle that initially pitted conservative commentators against the Biden Administration but ends with the executive branch led by people who supported the plaintiffs all along. The original complaint from the attorneys general of Missouri and Louisiana, and individual plaintiffs, alleged that the Biden administration coerced social media platforms to censor posts related to COVID-19 and the 2020 election. Under the proposed consent agreement, the Surgeon General’s office, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) are barred for 10 years from threatening social media companies with legal, regulatory, or economic consequences to influence content moderation decisions involving protected speech. The case, Murthy v Missouri, reached the US Supreme Court after a federal district judge and the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals sided the plaintiffs, but the High Court ruled 6–3 that the plaintiffs did not have standing to bring the complaint.
Context – Most conservative leaders believe that the top social media companies discriminated against them in league with progressive advocacy groups, academics, researchers, media outlets, and government agencies. The Supreme Court delivered two indecisive rulings in cases involving social media content moderation in 2024. In Moody v NetChoice, all nine justices agreed to send challenges to Texas and Florida laws regulating social media content moderation back to lower courts to determine how the laws impact other types of digital platforms. While five agreed that social media content moderation was likely protected speech, the overall ruling did not address the issue and has been used by some courts to justify regulation since. Murthy v Missouri was the second case. The six justices who tossed out the complaint did not speak to limits on government pressure on social media in their opinion, while three conservative justices dissented and argued the Biden Administration clearly improperly pressured the platforms.