Supreme Court wary of restricting government contact with social media platforms in free speech case

The Supreme Court on Monday appeared wary of limiting the Biden administration’s contacts with social media platforms in a closely watched dispute that tests how much the government can pressure social media companies to remove content before crossing a constitutional line from persuasion into coercion.

The case, known as Murthy v. Missouri, arose out of efforts during the early months of the Biden administration to push social media platforms to take down posts that officials said spread falsehoods about the pandemic and the 2020 presidential election.

A U.S. district court judge said White House officials, as well as some federal agencies and their employees, violated the First Amendment’s right to free speech by “coercing” or “significantly encouraging” social media sites’ content-moderation decisions. The judge issued an injunction restricting the Biden administration’s contacts with platforms on a variety of issues, though that order has been on hold.

During oral arguments on Monday, the justices seemed skeptical of a ruling that would broadly restrict the government’s communications with social media platforms, raising concerns about hamstringing officials’ ability to communicate with platforms about certain matters.

“Some might say that the government actually has a duty to take steps to protect the citizens of this country, and you seem to be suggesting that that duty cannot manifest itself in the government encouraging or even pressuring platforms to take down harmful information,” Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson told Benjamin Aguiñaga, the Louisiana solicitor general. “I’m really worried about that, because you’ve got the First Amendment operating in an environment of threatening circumstances from the government’s perspective, and you’re saying the government can’t interact with the source of those problems.”

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