The Supreme Court dealt a blow Thursday to Republican officials who accused the White House of suppressing posts on social media about the COVID-19 pandemic and the 2020 election by asking tech giants to remove disinformation.
Officials in Missouri and Louisiana, along with five social media users, sued in 2022, accusing the federal government of operating a “censorship enterprise” and “coercing” social media companies to nix content not favored by the White House.
But the justices ruled that they simply had no standing to sue.
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“To establish standing, the plaintiffs must demonstrate a substantial risk that, in the near future, they will suffer an injury that is traceable to a government defendant and redressable by the injunction they seek,” Justice Amy Coney Barrett wrote. “Because no plaintiff has carried that burden, none has standing to seek a preliminary injunction.”
The 6-3 majority included Barrett, Chief Justice John Roberts, Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, Brett Kavanaugh, and Ketanji Brown Jackson, while Justices Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas, and Neil Gorsuch wrote a dissenting opinion.
Alito called the majority opinion “regrettable,” arguing that the court is permitting “the successful campaign of coercion in this case to stand as an attractive model for future officials who want to control what the people say, hear and think.”
The ruling gives the green light to the White House to keep pressing social media companies to root out disinformation at a crucial time ahead of the November presidential election. The Department of Homeland Security, in particular, has the right to flag posts on Facebook or X that could be disinformation spread by foreign agents to sow instability before the vote.
As the case was still winding its way through the courts last year, social media platforms said federal officials stymied by the legal battle had stopped warning them of potential global influence campaigns, a worrying development to some lawmakers and those in the intelligence community who said foreign threats may be going undetected.
