The Supreme Court heard oral arguments on Tuesday for Gonzalez v. Google, a case that concerns Big Tech, Section 230, and whether social media companies should be held accountable for content posted on their sites. The court’s decision will have important implications for both tech companies and users, especially insofar as it touches on free speech concerns. But the most striking part of Tuesday’s oral arguments was how frustrated the court seemed to be with having to hear the case in the first place.

“We’re a court. We don’t know about these things,” Justice Elena Kagan said at one point. “You know, these are not like the nine greatest experts on the internet.”

Fair enough.

Justice Brett Kavanaugh agreed: “Isn't it better to keep [Section 230] the way it is, for us, and to put the burden on Congress to change that, and they can consider the implications and make these predictive judgments?”

This has been a recurring theme throughout the court’s most recent terms: the justices are begging, and in some cases even demanding, that Congress please do its job.

In West Virginia v. EPA, for example, which the court decided during the previous term, the majority argued that it is Congress’s responsibility, not the bureaucracy’s, to set regulatory policy. As Chief Justice John Roberts wrote, Congress never gave the Environmental Protection Agency the authority to pass sweeping emissions caps, and if that is an authority legislators wish to give to bureaucratic regulators then they must provide the EPA with “clear congressional authorization.”

In Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, too, the majority opinion made it clear that state lawmakers, and the citizens to whom they are accountable, must decide the question of abortion for themselves instead of relying on the courts to do it for them.

This same sentiment was present during Google v. Gonzalez’s oral arguments. Sure, the court could try and determine the bounds of algorithmic regulation and whether Section 230 offers tech companies more protection than they deserve. But that’s not its job. It’s Congress’s since Section 230 is Congress’s law.

Lawmakers’ habit of transferring power to unelected persons, whether they be bureaucrats or Supreme Court justices, fundamentally undermines the way our government is supposed to work. It is we, the people, through our elected representatives, who rule over the government. Congress’s dereliction of duty has flipped the roles, making it next to impossible for voters to hold to account the government officials who abuse their authority.

The Supreme Court, at least, recognizes this. When will Congress?