With Justices Like These...

     Few other nations have as a core tenet of their very existence, the guarantee of the freedom of speech, the freedom of expression, to say what you think without any kind of retribution. It is not a guarantee that there will be no consequences for your free speech. Those consequences may be unintended, unwanted, or just plain bad. But if you are willing to live with that tradeoff, welcome to America. Part of the beauty, at least with the American concept of freedom of speech, is the fact that not even the government can tell you, “You can’t say that” or at least we thought so until this week. As the Supreme Court handed down decisions this week in a myriad of cases, one stood out as rather disturbing and could leave one struggling to remember that we have a majority of conservative justices on the court.

     In a 6-3 decision, the court ruled in the Murthy vs. Missouri case that the states who sued the Biden administration citing censorship lacked standing in the case. The case was originally brought by then-Attorney Generals Jeff Landry of Louisiana and Eric Schmitt of Missouri. Landry is now Governor of Louisiana and Schmitt is a Senator. The suit accused high-ranking Biden administration officials of colluding with social media and tech companies to censor topics like the Hunter Biden laptop story, the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic, and face mask efficacy.

     Justice Amy Coney Barrett wrote for the majority in the ruling saying, “The plaintiffs, without any concrete link between their injuries and the defendants’ conduct, ask us to conduct a review of the years-long communications between dozens of federal officials, across different agencies, with different social media platforms, about different topics.” Coney Barret went on to write, “The plaintiffs claim standing based on the ‘direct censorship’ of their own speech as well as their ‘right to listen’ to others who faced social media censorship. Notably, both theories depend on the platform’s actions – yet the plaintiffs do not seek to enjoin the platforms from restricting any posts or accounts. They seek to enjoin Government agencies and officials from pressuring or encouraging the platforms to suppress protected speech in the future. The states’ alleged injuries were of a one-step removed anticipatory nature.” Dissenting from the ruling were Justices Alito, Thomas, and Gorsuch.

 

    Writing for the dissent, Alito rightly pointed out that “if the lower court’s assessment of the voluminous record is correct, this is one of the most important free speech cases to reach this court in years.” The case stems from Biden administration and other government officials putting pressure on Facebook and other social media platforms to suppress the speech of doctors, healthcare officials, and anyone else, mainly conservatives, who questioned the approved messages of Dr. Anthony Fauci, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) at the height of the COVID pandemic, and the Hunter Biden laptop story weeks before the election in 2020. While Barrett maintained that “the plaintiffs rely on allegations of past Government censorship as evidence that future censorship is likely.” Ya think?! Alito was apparently of the same mind and responded that the plaintiffs’ standing in the case was “more than sufficient,” “And consequently, we are obligated to tackle the free speech issue that the case presents. The court, however, shirks that duty and thus permits 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. That is regrettable.”

     Fox News legal expert and George Washington University Law Professor Jonathan Turley broke it down this way, calling it “censorship by surrogate.” By using social media platforms to do its dirty work, the federal government is engaging in indirectly what it is prohibited from doing directly by the First Amendment. So, in effect, the Supreme Court of the United States has given the federal government, which in this case happens to come in the form of the Biden administration, you know, the same people who have left those who are in jail for being at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, to languish in prison for three years and denying them due process, unfettered access to social media platforms in an election year.

     We have already seen what Joe Biden’s “Orwellian” censorship machine can do in an election year. In 2020, 36 percent of Democrat voters alone had not heard of the Hunter Biden laptop story, 4.6 percent of them said they would not have voted for Joe Biden had they known. Of all voters, 79 percent believe that Donald Trump would have been reelected had the story been allowed to see the light of day. That is election interference. But let’s set aside the vast government censorship machine for a second. What about average Americans? Well, it means that if you post something on social media that the government doesn’t like, it might just disappear. “Wait! They can’t do that,” you say. Well, now they can. They just tell the social media platform of your choice to remove it. Sound like America? No, it sounds more like the Ministry of Truth.

     Then there are the media outlets the government doesn’t like, a.k.a., conservative media outlets. What’s to stop the government from instructing Facebook to take down the Fox News or Newsmax page, simply because they are critical and dare to question the Biden administration? Will they be “directly affected” enough for Justice Coney Barrett? And what of Coney Barrett and her fellow conservative justices? Most of them went through pretty contentious confirmation hearings. What if they had been unable to go online and defend themselves and their records? It’s a sad day in America for free speech, and who would have thought a conservative majority Supreme Court would have brought it to us? With friends like that…