{"id":83665,"date":"2024-03-18T19:52:02","date_gmt":"2024-03-18T19:52:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/2024\/03\/18\/justices-sound-skeptical-of-imposing-broad-limits-on-how-the-government-can-speak-with-social-media-platforms\/"},"modified":"2024-03-18T19:52:02","modified_gmt":"2024-03-18T19:52:02","slug":"justices-sound-skeptical-of-imposing-broad-limits-on-how-the-government-can-speak-with-social-media-platforms","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/2024\/03\/18\/justices-sound-skeptical-of-imposing-broad-limits-on-how-the-government-can-speak-with-social-media-platforms\/","title":{"rendered":"Justices sound skeptical of imposing broad limits on how the government can speak with social media platforms"},"content":{"rendered":"


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During oral arguments on Monday, both liberal and conservative justices on the Supreme Court appeared wary of imposing broad limits on how the government can communicate with social media companies about problematic content it thinks should be removed.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The case at issue is called Murthy v. Missouri<\/em><\/a>, and it asks the court to determine whether the Biden administration\u2019s communications with platforms coerced the companies to take down content, like misinformation about covid vaccines, thereby violating the First Amendment. It also asks the court to consider whether the government\u2019s encouragement to take down such posts actually transformed the platforms themselves into state actors.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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But several justices seemed skeptical of the arguments from Louisiana Solicitor General Benjamin Agui\u00f1aga, who argued on behalf of the states and individual plaintiffs who challenged the Biden administration on its communications with social media companies. The justices appeared to worry about the far-reaching consequences of limiting the ways the government is able to speak with tech platforms.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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In the case originally filed in May 2022, the attorneys general for Louisiana and Missouri accused the Biden administration of coercing platforms to censor viewpoints they disagreed with. They had secured wins from the lower courts, which issued and upheld an injunction on the government\u2019s communications with platforms, though the appeals court narrowed its scope. The justices must now determine whether that injunction was appropriate and where the line falls between persuasion and coercion.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Liberal Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson asked Agui\u00f1aga a hypothetical that demonstrated concerns with how a ruling squarely in the states\u2019 favor could play out. She imagined a social media challenge among teens that encouraged them to jump out of windows, leading to injuries and deaths. \u201cIs it your view that the government authorities could not declare those circumstances a public emergency and encourage social media platforms to take down the information that is instigating this problem?\u201d Jackson asked.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Agui\u00f1aga said the government could use the bully pulpit to publicly encourage the platforms to do that. But he took issue with private communications instructing platforms on what they should do.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cI think they absolutely can say, \u2018This is a problem, it\u2019s going rampant on your platforms,\u2019\u201d Agui\u00f1aga said. \u201cBut the moment that the government tries to use its ability as the government and its stature as the government to pressure them to take it down, that is when you\u2019re interfering with the third-party speech rights.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Later, Jackson said, \u201cMy biggest concern is that your view has the First Amendment hamstringing the government in significant ways in the most important time periods … I\u2019ve heard you say a couple times that the government can post its own speech, but in my hypothetical, \u2018Kids, this is not safe, don\u2019t do it,\u2019 is not going to get it done.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cMy biggest concern is that your view has the First Amendment hamstringing the government in significant ways in the most important time periods\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Chief Justice John Roberts, a conservative, followed up on Jackson\u2019s hypothetical, asking whether encouraging platforms to take something down rises to the level of coercion. He added that Jackson\u2019s example was not about eliminating a viewpoint but rather an instruction for a dangerous game.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cThe moment that the government identifies an entire category of content that it wishes to not be in the modern public sphere, that is a First Amendment problem,\u201d Agui\u00f1aga said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Conservative Justice Amy Coney Barrett asked Agui\u00f1aga a different hypothetical, where he and other members of the Louisiana state government were doxxed and people were posting on social media that \u201cpeople should rally, and you should be harmed.\u201d She asked, assuming the speech did not cross the line of becoming illegal, whether it would be appropriate for the Federal Bureau of Investigation to encourage social media platforms to take down the messages.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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After Agui\u00f1aga began responding that he\u2019s a \u201cpurist on the First Amendment,\u201d Coney Barrett interrupted and said, \u201cDo you know how often the FBI makes those kinds of calls?\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cThe FBI absolutely can identify certain kinds of troubling situations like that for the platforms and let the platforms take action,\u201d Agui\u00f1aga said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Some of the justices wondered if even testy exchanges between the government and platforms were all that dissimilar from how it might engage with the press. \u201cI\u2019d assumed, thought, experienced government press people throughout the federal government who regularly call up the media and berate them,\u201d conservative Justice Brett Kavanaugh said in an exchange with US Principal Deputy Solicitor General Brian Fletcher, who was arguing on behalf of the federal government.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Fletcher acknowledged that there have likely been instances of angry language or profanity in communications between the White House and the press.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Kavanaugh said it did seem strange to him that the government and platforms would seek to partner on issues like covid. Fletcher said that\u2019s a function of the unusual circumstances in a scenario like the pandemic, where platforms chose to advance good information and reach out to the government, so in that case, \u201cit\u2019s an open door.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cLike Justice Kavanaugh, I\u2019ve had some experience encouraging press to suppress their own speech,\u201d Kagan said, to laughter. \u201cYou just wrote a bad editorial \u2014 here are the five reasons you shouldn\u2019t write another one. You just wrote a story that\u2019s filled with factual errors \u2014 here are the 10 reasons why you shouldn\u2019t do that again. I mean this happens literally thousands of times a day in the federal government.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Some justices also didn\u2019t seem convinced by the causal link the states sought to draw between the government\u2019s messages to tech platforms and later moderation decisions. In one instance the states presented, the Biden administration contacted Facebook in May 2021, asking it not to distribute posts about vaccine hesitancy, and in July 2021, Facebook allegedly blocked health groups in Louisiana that one of the plaintiffs was involved in.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cA lot of things could happen in two months,\u201d Kagan said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Conservative Justice Neil Gorsuch also expressed frustration with what he called an \u201cepidemic\u201d of \u201cuniversal injunction[s],\u201d questioning the remedy offered by the lower court, which sought to block a large swath of communication. Agui\u00f1aga responded that the breadth of the injunction reflects that \u201cthe breadth of the government\u2019s enterprise in this case was extremely broad.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The states received friendlier questioning from Alito and conservative Justice Clarence Thomas. Thomas asked if the states could make their case even without proving the coercion if they could show the government coordinated with the platforms. Agui\u00f1aga said they could. Alito at one point tried to steer discussion of the states\u2019 arguments back to a more pointed question about coercion.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cI thought your principle argument was that … coercion doesn\u2019t apply only when the government says, \u2018Do this, and if you don\u2019t do this, there\u2019s going to be legal consequences,\u2019\u201d Alito said, \u201cbut that it\u2019s a more flexible standard, and you have to take into account the whole course of the relationship.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The Associated Press<\/em> says<\/a> a decision should come by early summer.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n


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During oral arguments on Monday, both liberal and conservative justices on the Supreme Court appeared wary of imposing broad limits on how the government can communicate with social media companies about problematic content it thinks should be removed. The case at issue is called Murthy v. Missouri, and it asks the court to determine whether […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":83666,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-83665","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tech"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83665","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=83665"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83665\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/83666"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=83665"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=83665"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=83665"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}