A federal court is investigating the nature of the government’s talks with major tech firms and has ordered them to be made public.
The landmark action alleging conspiracy between the federal government and Big Tech to restrict particular users in relation to COVID-19 was recently denied dismissal by Judge Terry Doughty of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Louisiana.
The states of Missouri and Louisiana filed a lawsuit against Vice President Joe Biden and the federal government, naming as defendants YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn, alleging that the companies had censored certain viewpoints and users on their platforms at the direction of the Biden administration.
The lawsuit claims that social media companies violated the First Amendment by labeling information as “misinformation” or “disinformation,” and that the Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of Homeland Security violated the Administrative Procedure Act by overstepping their authority.
“The Court finds that the Complaint alleges significant encouragement and coercion that converts the otherwise private conduct of censorship on social media platforms into state action, and is unpersuaded by Defendants’ arguments to the contrary,” Doughty wrote in his ruling. “Further, while the Government may certainly select the messages it wishes to convey, this freedom is limited by the more fundamental principle that a government entity may not employ threats to limit the free speech of private citizens.”
The situation escalated after Missouri’s attorney general, Andrew Bailey, tweeted that the United States should be afraid of the legal justifications Biden’s team presented in favour of censorship.
The judge asked the feds if they had ever read George Orwell’s 1984, pointing out the similarities between the case and the book.
— Attorney General Andrew Bailey (@AGAndrewBailey) June 1, 2023
The judge also asked them if the First Amendment applied to Americans’ right to say that the 2020 election was stolen.
Their answer?
It depends.
— Attorney General Andrew Bailey (@AGAndrewBailey) June 1, 2023
The judge also pointed out that it seemed to be only conservatives who are targeted for their speech, asking the feds if they could provide one example of a liberal who was censored due to “misinformation.”
— Attorney General Andrew Bailey (@AGAndrewBailey) June 1, 2023
Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, the Court asked the feds why he should believe them when they say they claim censorship has stopped and won’t happen again.
And that is exactly why we are asking the Court for a preliminary injunction to halt this vast censorship enterprise.
— Attorney General Andrew Bailey (@AGAndrewBailey) June 1, 2023
Stanford University School of Medicine professor Jay Bhattacharya sounded a similar note of caution regarding the legal arguments being made by the Biden administration.
The Missouri v. Biden case has revealed the Biden administration’s shocking disregard for the free speech rights of its political opponents and scientific dissidents. The judge hearing the case referred to it as a Ministry of Truth. This thread by @akheriaty is absolute fire. https://t.co/VusWB5rCNy
— Jay Bhattacharya (@DrJBhattacharya) May 28, 2023
Missouri Republican Senator Eric Schmitt has accused the Biden administration of operating “the largest speech censorship operation in recent American history,” which he discovered while serving as Missouri’s attorney general.
“The Biden Administration has led the largest speech censorship operation in recent American history,” Schmitt said. “Since taking office, President Biden and his team have labored to suppress viewpoints with which they disagree. And in so doing, they have infringed upon the individual freedoms of millions of Americans.”
Schmitt said that the Biden administration “colluded with social media giants Meta, Twitter, and YouTube to censor free speech in the name of combating so-called ‘disinformation’ and ‘misinformation,’ which led to the suppression and censorship of truthful information on a scale never before seen.”
Rephrased from: The Republic Brief By: Trump Knows
Learn To Play Video Poker Perfectly – Free Training Program