The Supreme Court on Friday said it would indefinitely block a lower court order curbing Biden administration efforts to combat controversial social media posts on topics including COVID-19 and election security.
The justices said they would hear arguments in a lawsuit filed by Louisiana, Missouri and other parties accusing administration officials of unconstitutionally squelching conservative points of view. The new case adds to a term already heavy with social media issues.
Justices Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch and Clarence Thomas would have rejected the emergency appeal from the Biden administration.
“At this time in the history of our country, what the Court has done, I fear, will be seen by some as giving the Government a green light to use heavy-handed tactics to skew the presentation of views on the medium that increasingly dominates the dissemination of news. That is most unfortunate,” Alito wrote in dissent.
White House communications staffers, the surgeon general, the FBI and the U.S. cybersecurity agency are among those who would have been affected by the order. The lawsuit said they were among those who coerced changes in online content on Facebook, X (formerly Twitter) and other media platforms.
Notably, the companies themselves are not part of the litigation.
A panel of three judges on the New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals had ruled earlier that the administration had likely brought unconstitutional pressure on the media platforms. The...
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