A ruling was issued on Tuesday by Judge Terry A. Doughty of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Louisiana restricting President Joe Biden’s administration contact with social media sites.
Judge Doughty likewise curbed the Department of Health and Human Services and FBI from contacting social media companies for “the purpose of urging, encouraging, pressuring, or inducing in any manner the removal, deletion, suppression, or reduction of content containing protected free speech.”
Officials cannot ask about the removal or limitation of a single post or account or flag individual posts for removal.
Doughty limits Biden
The order on Tuesday was in response to a complaint filed by the Republican attorneys general in Louisiana and Missouri, who claimed that Biden administration officials conspired with social media sites to muzzle conservative opponents, particularly at the height of the COVID-19 outbreak.
“The Biden Administration created a vast censorship enterprise. It needs to be dismantled. Today was a big win. Let freedom ring!” Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmidt tweeted in reaction to the order.
Former Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt and Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry first brought up the case. Schmitt, a member of the U.S. Senate in November praised the order on Twitter and referred to it as a victory for free expression.
Officials named in the directive were Jen Easterly, the director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, and Alejandro Mayorkas, the secretary of homeland security.
Comms between governments
The decree by Judge Doughty made a few exemptions for communications between government representatives and businesses, including those that served to alert about threats to public safety and criminal activities.
This directive from Doughty — an appointee of former President Donald Trump — is the most recent development in a protracted legal dispute being fought by Republican-led states which assert that the federal government pressured social media companies to remove content that purportedly contained false information about the coronavirus, election security, and other issues.
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