The Supreme Court has just agreed to take up the state of Missouri’s case against Joe Biden regarding the use of social media companies to censor free speech. But in doing so the court granted a stay on the restrictions imposed by the lower courts.

Here’s the short version:

REUTERS – The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday lifted restrictions imposed by lower courts on the ability of President Joe Biden’s administration to encourage social media companies to remove content deemed misinformation, including about elections and COVID-19.

The justices granted the administration’s emergency request to put on hold a preliminary injunction constraining how the White House and certain other federal officials communicate with social media platforms, also agreeing to take up the government’s appeal and hear arguments in the case.

Here’s the longer version via Benjamin Weingarten, which includes the dissent by Justice Alito against the stay of the lower court restrictions:

????BREAKING: The Supreme Court has granted cert in the landmark free speech case in the digital era, Missouri v. Biden.

It will take up questions regarding standing; whether the feds — in coercing and colluding with the social media companies to suppress Wrongthink — violated the First Amendment; and on the legitimacy/scope of the preliminary injunction freezing fed-led speech policing

The injunction freezing fed-led speech policing has been stayed while the Supreme Court grapples with the questions at hand.

Justice Alito, joined by Justices Thomas and Gorsuch, dissents: “[W]hat 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.”

More from Justice Alito’s dissent:

“[A] majority of the Court, without undertaking a full review of the record and without any explanation, suspends [the freeze on fed-led speech policing]…until the Court completes its review of this case, an event that may not occur until late in the spring of next year. Government censorship of private speech is antithetical to our democratic form of government, and therefore today’s decision is highly disturbing.”

To freeze the freeze on fed-led speech policing via a stay, the government had to prove stopping it from censoring you by proxy did it “irreparable harm.”

Justice Alito:

“Here, the Government’s attempts to demonstrate irreparable harm do not come close…Instead of providing any concrete proof that ‘harm is imminent’…the Government offers a series of hypothetical statements that a covered official might want to make in the future and that, it thinks, might be chilled…[S]uch speculation does not establish irreparable harm.”

Justice Alito reveals how perverse the government’s efforts are to fight the freeze on fed-led speech policing:

“The injunction applies only when the Government crosses the line and begins to coerce or control others’ exercise of their free-speech rights. Does the Government think that the First Amendment allows Executive Branch officials to engage in such conduct? Does it have plans for this to occur between now and the time when this case is decided?”

Justice Alito delivers a deserved broadside against the “conservative” SCOTUS:

“Despite the Government’s conspicuous failure to establish a threat of irreparable harm, the majority stays the injunction and thus allows the defendants to persist in committing the type of First Amendment violations that the lower courts identified. The majority takes this action in the face of the lower courts’ detailed findings of fact.”