– The Washington Times
The Justice Department reached a settlement agreement in a lawsuit alleging that the Biden administration pressured social media companies to remove or suppress disfavored speech by American citizens.
Three federal agencies — the Surgeon General’s office, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency — are now barred from threatening or pressuring social media companies to suppress protected speech, as was alleged under President Biden in interactions with Facebook, Instagram, X, LinkedIn and YouTube.
The settlement also prevents the agencies from directing or vetoing the companies’ social media decisions about censoring online content. The prohibition lasts 10 years.
The lawsuit alleged that the federal government pressured and encouraged major social media platforms to censor posts about COVID-19, the Hunter Biden laptop scandal and the 2020 presidential election. The settlement, filed Tuesday in a federal court in Louisiana, resolves the lawsuit brought by Missouri, Louisiana and several individual plaintiffs.
The U.S. District Court for the Western District of Louisiana found that the federal government likely caused certain plaintiffs to be deplatformed by major social media companies.
The New Civil Liberties Alliance, which represented the plaintiffs, described the alleged pressure to censor speech as “egregious First Amendment violations.”
“Federal officials may police the line between lawful and unlawful speech, but they have no role in deciding if speech is true or false — even so-called misinformation, disinformation, or malinformation,” NCLA President Mark Chenoweth said in a statement.
Former Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt, who brought the lawsuit against the Biden administration, said that this decision “locks in Americans’ First Amendment rights, and guarantees that even in the digital age, the federal government cannot deplatform protected speech they simply disagree with.”
The settlement ends a lawsuit that reached the U.S. Supreme Court during Mr. Biden’s presidency.
The court voted 6-3 to reject a lower court ruling, finding that the plaintiffs lacked legal standing to bring the lawsuit — meaning that the high court never ruled on the merits of whether the Biden administration violated the First Amendment.
On his first day back in the office, President Trump issued an executive order condemning Mr. Biden for infringing on free speech.
“The previous administration trampled free speech rights by censoring Americans’ speech on online platforms, often by exerting substantial coercive pressure on third parties, such as social media companies, to moderate, deplatform, or otherwise suppress speech that the Federal Government did not approve,” Mr. Trump said in the order.
Mr. Trump’s Justice Department said that Tuesday’s settlement aligns with this presidential mandate.
“The Biden administration coerced social media companies to stifle free speech that they disapproved of,” Attorney General Pam Bondi said in a statement. “These Department of Justice settlements are key steps in undoing those abuses of the First Amendment, especially against conservative media. We will never waver on protecting Americans’ right to speak freely.”
• Mary McCue Bell can be reached at mbell@washingtontimes.com.
