United States District Court Judge Terry Doughty's July 4th ruling issuing an injunction against the Biden administration and its collaborative censorship endeavors with Big Tech marked a poetic victory for free speech, coming as it did on the 247th anniversary of our nation's independence.
On Friday, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals issued its highly anticipated ruling in Missouri v. Biden, the case in which the states of Louisiana and Missouri, along with several individual social media users, challenged the federal government's coercive attempts to squelch speech on social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook, asserting it violated their First Amendment Rights.
In a nutshell, the appellate court agreed that the government had violated the Constitution, but it pared down the scope of the injunction issued by the district court, both in terms of the defendants to whom it applied and the nature of the prohibited actions.
In its 74-page ruling, the Fifth Circuit first set forth the violative conduct of the federal officials, noting the numerous contacts between officials from the White House, CDC, FBI, and, to a lesser extent, CISA and the State Department and platforms including Facebook, Twitter, Google, and YouTube.
The court did not find that the NIAID, State Department, and CISA did, so it held that the district court erred in including those agencies/officials in the injunction.
The district court was correct in its assessment-"Unrelenting pressure" from certain government officials likely "Had the intended result of suppressing millions of protected free speech postings by American citizens." We see no error or abuse of discretion in that finding.
To sum up: The Fifth Circuit agreed with the district court that White House, Surgeon General, CDC, and FBI officials violated the First Amendment rights of the plaintiffs and they are enjoined from coercing or significantly encouraging social media platforms to remove or suppress protected free speech.
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