Court Considers Whether Biden Improperly Censored Information

The U.S. Supreme Court this week will hear arguments in the pivotal case over whether the Biden White House went too far to censor online free speech to attempt to control the narrative around COVID-19 and other issues.

Social media platforms willingly bent the knee to the federal government under the guise of combating “misinformation” during the pandemic. Now justices will determine if this censorship ran afoul of the First Amendment.

The questions are obvious. Did Washington unlawfully pressure willing private companies to censor user content? Was the immense power of the federal government wielded to control the online flow of information?

The high court must weigh the pandemic period and the facts that were known and unknown at the time.

Tufts University law professor Michael Glennon told PJ Media that “there’s always a line-drawing problem. Inevitably, you’ve got to make very difficult judgments about when enough is enough.”

Then there’s the issue of social media companies being private entities. It is well within their rights to exercise judgment over platform content, but does that same right extend to federal bureaucrats?

The Supreme Court will doubtless hear convincing evidence that what many in power considered to be “misinformation” turned out to be true.

Further, it was not only COVID-19 postings that were erased at the behest of the government. The Biden administration is also believed to have pressured social media platforms to disallow communications concerning suspicions surrounding the 2020 presidential election.

Louisiana and Missouri, both led by Republicans, joined five social media users in suing the Biden White House over censorship. They will present evidence that posts were removed across virtually all platforms, including X, formerly Twitter, Facebook and YouTube.

The plaintiffs believe that the federal government illegally targeted conservative speech — a clear violation of the First Amendment.

A lower court last year issued a preliminary injunction against the Biden White House and other federal officials over the censorship program. The Supreme Court put the lower court injunction on hold in October until justices review the case.

The Justice Department believes it is the administration’s right to use its position as a bully pulpit to argue its case before the American people. The issue is, however, whether that right extends to censoring the free speech of those people it says it is attempting to protect.