(CN) — The Biden administration likely violated the First Amendment by coercing social media companies to suppress alleged misinformation about the Covid-19 pandemic and the 2020 presidential election, a federal judge ruled.
“During the COVID-19 pandemic, a period perhaps best characterized by widespread doubt and uncertainty, the United States Government seems to have assumed a role similar to an Orwellian ‘Ministry of Truth,’” U.S. Chief District Judge Terry Doughty wrote in a 155-page order he issued, not coincidentally, on Independence Day.
In a separate injunction, the Trump-appointed Doughty blocked federal officials from meeting with and contacting social media companies to pressure them into censoring protected speech.
Doughty noted that the states that brought the challenge, Missouri and Louisiana, are likely to succeed on their claims that the White House engaged in unlawful viewpoint discrimination by suppressing right-wing or conservative political views.
Missouri and Louisiana, joined by several individual plaintiffs, brought their lawsuit in May 2022 against President Joe Biden, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and its then-director Dr. Anthony Fauci, who led the administration’s pandemic response, and several other members of Biden’s Cabinet.
The states claim federal officials induced social media companies to censor posts questioning the efficacy of Covid-19 vaccines by threatening to remove protections the firms are afforded by Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which shields them from liability for content published by users of their platforms.
One example the lawsuit cited was when YouTube, a Google-owned video sharing platform, censored the Louisiana Department of Justice in August 2021 for sharing footage in which Louisianans criticized mask mandates and Covid lockdown measures.
Missouri says YouTube also removed video of four public meetings in the state’s St. Louis County because some citizens expressed the view that masks are ineffective against transmission of Covid-19.
“If the allegations made by plaintiffs are true, the present case arguably involves the most massive attack against free speech in United States’ history. In their attempts to suppress alleged disinformation, the Federal Government, and particularly the defendants named here, are alleged to have blatantly ignored the First Amendment’s right to free speech,” wrote Doughty, who presides over the Western District of Louisiana in Monroe.
Turning a blind eye to the White House's sway over social media companies could likewise allow it to influence the 2024 presidential election in Biden’s favor, the judge also warned.
Jim Hoft, owner and editor-in-chief of The Gateway Pundit, a far-right news website that has been accused of promoting conspiracy theories, is one of five individual plaintiffs who joined an amended version of the lawsuit filed in August 2022.
Hoft runs his publication’s social media accounts.
He said in court filings that Twitter suspended The Gateway Pundit’s account in January 2021 after he posted comments critical of Dr. Fauci’s statement that Covid vaccines would only block symptoms of the respiratory illness and not infections.
Twitter indefinitely suspended Hoft and The Gateway Pundit in February 2021 for violating its platform’s “civic integrity policy” due to his announcement his website would release video evidence of voting fraud during the 2020 election at Detroit’s ballot-counting center.
Hoft says the censorship was not limited to Twitter: Facebook has placed misinformation warning labels on The Gateway Pundit’s posts, and YouTube removed its videos about 2020 voter-integrity issues.
Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey, a Republican, celebrated Doughty’s order on Twitter.
“The Court has granted our motion to BLOCK top officials in the federal government from violating the First Amendment rights of millions of Americans. What a way to celebrate Independence Day,” Bailey wrote.
Jeff Landry, Louisiana's attorney general, said he is hopeful the injunction will benefit all Americans who use social media.
"Many individuals have seen their accounts suspended, throttled, shadow banned," the Republican stated in an interview on the TV network NTD. "And so I think that this ruling today certainly helps to bring some relief to a lot of citizens out there in this country as they discuss very important issues, such as elections and health care."
The New Civil Liberties Alliance, a Washington nonprofit that says its goal is to protect Americans from unconstitutional overreach by state and federal agencies, represents the four other individual plaintiffs in the case, three of whom it describes as distinguished scientists.
The alliance said in a statement lauding Doughty's ruling that its clients were blacklisted on social media merely for expressing opposition to the government's Covid-19 restrictions and regulations.
"Our clients were not saying or doing anything remotely unlawful. But because the government disagreed with their views they were thrown out of the modern public square. That should not happen in America, and with this order, it won’t," said John Vecchione, the alliance's senior litigation counsel.
The Biden administration, meanwhile, contends the injunction will hinder its ability to "provide accurate information to the public on matters of grave public concern," to combat foreign influence campaigns and threats to national security, and prosecute crimes.
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