In a landmark decision, Louisiana Federal Judge Terry Doughty upheld Americans’ First Amendment rights to free speech without infringement by the government. 

The ruling comes after Louisiana and Missouri attorneys general sued the Biden administration for collaborating with Big Tech to suppress speech, labeling the dissent as “misinformation.” 

Doughty’s new injunction prohibits the federal government from working with non-state firms to cancel or suppress online speech. 

Following Missouri v. Biden, Doughty issued a preliminary injunction that bars various federal agencies (ranging from the FBI, Justice Department, Department of Homeland Security, and White House officials) from meeting with social media firms to censor speech on digital platforms. 

The 155-page court opinion contains many details of state-directed censorship.

This includes the feds threatening social media executives to censor accounts, sending emails with requests to suppress a specific individual, or using long, drawn-out meetings between the two parties. 

The opinion also stresses how Big Tech companies, such as Facebook, were updating the feds on their censorship efforts. 

Judge Doughty’s injunction has been temporally halted by judges on the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals while the case is under appeal by the defendants. 

The evidence presented by Doughty in the case contradicts the FBI’s previous claim that their concern was solely related to “disinformation” from foreign countries. 

The FBI allegedly made almost no distinction between American or foreign so-called “disinformation,” let alone create categories for such classification.

All speech suppressed on behalf of the federal government by Big Tech was conservative, which Doughty says indicates ideological bias. 

Doughty said while the First Amendment primarily applies to the government, not private entities like Twitter and Facebook, these social media platforms acted as de facto government agents.