Conservatives cheer order handicapping Biden’s social media moderation efforts
Conservatives and Republicans are in a celebratory mood following a judge’s Independence Day order hindering the Biden administration’s social media content removal efforts, with lawmakers calling it a major victory for free speech.
US District Court Judge Terry Doughty, a Trump appointee, determined Tuesday that the Biden administration likely trampled upon the First Amendment by flagging content for social media companies to scrub.
Having long clamored about Big Tech censorship, conservatives almost universally welcomed the Doughty’s preliminary injunction, which imposed limits on the Biden administration’s contacts with social media giants for moderation purposes.
House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan’s office teased that a range of actions were the table following the court order.
“Big win for FREE SPEECH. Big loss for the censorship industrial complex,” tweeted Jordan (R-Ohio).
“Joe Biden’s federal government engaged in the most direct attack on the first amendment in US history through social media censorship. This is one of the most important district court opinions ever written. Holy hell, what a takedown & defense of free speech,” tweeted Clay Travis, founder of sports news site Outkick.
“A federal judge is stopping this White House from colluding with big tech to censor your free speech on social media. Releasing this decision on Independence Day was right on target,” Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) said.
“Biden admin/Deep State efforts to rig yet another presidential election suffered a setback today when regime agencies were enjoined by a federal judge from colluding with Big Tech and allied anti-free speech groups to censor Americans,” Judicial Watch president Tom Fitton chimed in.
“A federal judge has temporarily BLOCKED the Biden admin from colluding with Big Tech to censor content and individuals’ platforms on social media. This ruling is a good step toward further securing the free speech rights of Americans online,” agreed Rep. Ben Cline (R-Va.).
“HAPPY INDEPENDENCE DAY!” the House Judiciary GOP Twitter account simply said.
“Today’s historic ruling is a big step forward in the continued fight to prohibit our government from unconstitutional censorship!” said Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry, a plaintiff in the case.
Democrat presidential hopeful Robert F. Kennedy Jr. also cheered the order, which noted how the Biden administration had dubbed his anti-vaccine Children’s Health Defense as one of the “disinformation dozen.”
“Federal judge orders President Biden to stop censoring his critics including me. The decision mentions me on page 17. Happy Independence Day Everyone!” he tweeted.
A White House official told The Post Tuesday that the Department of Justice was reviewing the injunction and “will evaluate its options.”
The case had been brought by Landry and former Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt, who is now a Republican senator.
Schmitt’s successor, Andrew Bailey, continued the efforts after Schmitt was elected to his new position in 2020.
Doughty stipulated that Biden Administration defendants in the case cannot collaborate with social media officials for “the purpose of urging, encouraging, pressuring, or inducing in any manner the removal, deletion, suppression, or reduction of content containing protected free speech.”
There are carveouts for national security and criminal investigations.
Named defendants in the order include White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, employees of the Justice Department and FBI, Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra, and Surgeon General Vivek Murthy.
The case centered around the Biden administration flagging so-called “disinformation” percolating on social media about the COVID-19 pandemic and election denialism.
Critics of Doughty’s order contend that he overstepped his mandate and handicapped legitimate enforcement efforts.
“This is reverse prior restraint: judge preventing the government from speaking about speech to the platforms. In our system, the government is allowed to speak, and the private entities are allowed to ignore it. That’s also free speech,” Richard Stengel, former undersecretary of state in the Obama administration said.
“This is a truly astonishing ruling that will compromise the health, safety, and yes, liberty of some so others can spread false, harmful information in the name of free speech,” MSNBC legal analyst Lisa Rubin said.
Attorney Gabriel Malor tweeted that he was “skeptical” of Doughty’s ruling, since it would not only apply to high-ranking officials, but to “everyone right down to the mail room and to actions like engaging Instagram’s spam filter on their own posts.”
“One of the parts that will certainly be vacated on appeal, is that, by its terms, this PI would apply to any of these employees who, for example, even asked Facebook to remove an offensive comment on their own personal—not gov’t—Facebook pages,” Malor tweeted Tuesday in response to the ruling. “Clear speech infringement.”
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