by Amy Howe at SCOTUS Blog
Less than one month after hearing oral arguments in a pair of challenges to controversial laws in Texas and Florida that would regulate how large social media companies control content posted on their sites, the Supreme Court will hear argument in a challenge by the Biden administration to a federal court’s order that would limit the ability of government officials to communicate with social media companies about their content moderation policies.
Government agencies have, for years, encouraged social media companies to restrict harmful or illegal content, from terrorism to human trafficking. But following efforts by the Biden administration in 2021 to encourage companies to restrict misinformation about the COVID-19 vaccine, content that Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy called “an urgent threat to public health,” challengers said the government had gone too far. The government’s suggestions to tech giants amounted to violations of users’ free speech rights, they say.
Defending the communications, sometimes referred to as “jawboning,” the Biden administration contends that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit in New Orleans “imposed unprecedented limits on the ability of the President’s closest aides to speak about matters of public concern, on the FBI’s ability to address threats to the Nation’s security, and on CDC’s ability to relay public-health information.” But two states and several individuals whose posts on social media were removed or downgraded counter that the “government can speak freely on any topic it chooses, but it cannot pressure and coerce private companies to censor ordinary Americans.”