More than 40 officials for the Biden administration are temporarily barred from working with social media companies concerning "protected speech" after a surprise July 4 temporary ruling in a Louisiana-based federal court.
U.S. District Judge Terry Doughty of Louisiana granted the preliminary injunction Tuesday in response to a 2022 lawsuit brought by attorneys general in Louisiana and Missouri, alleging the government overstepped in its efforts to combat COVID-19 misinformation during the height of the pandemic. The ruling applies to officials all the way from White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre to Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra.
HOW THE SUPREME COURT COULD NEXT REIN IN THE BIDEN ADMINISTRATION
The preliminary injunction listed several government agencies, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the State Department, the Department of Homeland Security, and the FBI, that are prohibited by the injunction from discussions with social media companies aimed at “encouraging, pressuring, or inducing in any manner the removal, deletion, suppression, or reduction of content containing protected free speech," according to the seven-page judgment filing.
At least 39 officials are listed by name, including DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, Jean-Pierre, and Becerra.
It also names Jen Easterly, who leads the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, and Dr. Hugh Auchincloss, who replaced Dr. Anthony Fauci at the helm of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases earlier this year.
Notably, the ruling in Missouri v. Biden names the Justice Department "along with their secretary, director, administrators, and employees," without mentioning any DOJ officials by name.
Doughty, an appointee of former President Donald Trump, released the sizable 155-page opinion on Independence Day when most courts were closed. He wrote that the government's efforts to curb disinformation campaigns related to the pandemic was "the most massive attack against free speech in United States’ history,” in which it “almost exclusively targeted conservative speech” and “blatantly ignored” free speech rights.
Republican attorneys general in Louisiana and Missouri say that through public and private messages, White House officials "coerced" social media platforms to "suppress" protected free speech.
The administration counters by saying the government left it up to social media companies to decide what constitutes misinformation and how to respond to it. In one brief filed on May 3, it compared the lawsuit to an attempt to place a legal gag order on the federal government and "suppress the speech of federal government officials under the guise of protecting the speech rights of others.”
One of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit also includes conservative website owner Jim Hoft, who accuses the administration of using unconstitutional tactics to suppress information related to President Joe Biden's son Hunter Biden, suppression of speech surrounding COVID-19 lockdowns, suppression of speech about the lab leak theory pertaining to the virus's origins, and additional suppression related to "negative posts about the economy" and "speech about election integrity in the 2020 presidential election," according to Page 4 of the filing.
The judge also contended on Page 108 that the FBI "likely misled" social media companies into believing a story about Hunter Biden's laptop found at a repair store was "Russian disinformation, which resulted in suppression of the story a few weeks prior to the 2020 Presidential election."
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
“Once a government is committed to the principle of silencing the voice of opposition, it has only one place to go, and that is down the path of increasingly repressive measures, until it becomes a source of terror to all its citizens and creates a country where everyone lives in fear,” Doughty wrote in an ominous conclusion of his lengthy opinion, saying the U.S. government appears to have "assumed a similar role to an Orwellian 'Ministry of Truth.'"
The Biden administration can appeal the ruling to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit, which is considered to be the most Trump-influenced circuit court given the number of appointees named by the former president during his term.