A federal appeals court ruled Friday that the Biden administration most likely overstepped the First Amendment by urging the major social media platforms to remove misleading or false content about the COVID-19 pandemic, partly upholding a lower court’s preliminary injunction in a victory for conservatives.
The court limited the scope of a preliminary injunction, which prohibited officials from numerous agencies from having practically any contact with the social media companies. Instead, the court narrowed the impact to the White House, the Surgeon General’s Office, the FBI, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
“This might be the most significant First Amendment case in the internet age and is a crucial outcome for flourishing of free speech in an era when social media has become the modern public square,” she said. The debate over how far companies can go to limit content online — known as moderation — has become increasingly vehement and polarizing. On one side, government officials have argued that they have a duty to protect public health and national security from false or misleading information. Republicans and others, however, have accused the social media giants of colluding with government officials in violation of First Amendment protections of free speech.
That has also included regular meetings to share information on the Islamic State and other terrorist groups. Many of the cases cited in the legal challenge involved the COVID pandemic, when government officials feared that misinformation and disinformation about vaccines and other treatments hampered efforts to control the spread of the coronavirus, which has killed more than 1.1 million Americans.
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