Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, a prominent professor of medicine at Stanford, said that the Supreme Court’s decision in the Murthy v. Missouri case creates “a very very dangerous situation”.
During an interview on The Steve Hilton Show on Thursday, Bhattacharya heavily criticized the Court for its refusal to protect Americans’ free speech from government censorship. “In effect, this ruling guts the First Amendment,” the doctor said. He suggested that the government “can willy-nilly go censor whatever ideas it likes on the premise that it is misinformation.”
Describing the implications of the ruling, Bhattacharya added, “The American people no longer really have the right to effectively criticize the government when it itself spreads misinformation.”
Describing the implications of the ruling, Bhattacharya added, “The American people no longer really have the right to effectively criticize the government when it itself spreads misinformation.”
Notably, Bhattacharya was one of the plaintiffs and key victims of Big Tech censorship highlighted in the Murthy case due to his refusal to comply with COVID lockdown and vaccine mandates.
Bhattacharya summarized the case noting that the plaintiffs were simply asking that the government adhere to the First Amendment: “I mean, what we are essentially saying is that the government should stop meddling in the moderation decisions that the social media companies make.”
At the beginning of the interview, Bhattacharya explained the problem that intensified during the COVID-19 pandemic. “What happened during the pandemic was that the government — specifically the U.S. Attorney General’s office, the State Department, the FBI and the White House itself — reached out to social media companies [and] told them who and what to censor,” he asserted.
Bhattacharya explained that the censorship however was not based on science but rather on the government’s policy prescriptions. “[T]he school closures, the closures of churches, mosques and synagogues, the vax mandates, the idea that masks don’t really work that well to protect you against COVID, the idea that there is such a thing as natural immunity—all of those were deemed misinformation by the government.”
In that same vein, Bhattacharya noted that these requests do not read like mere suggestions. “[The government] reached out to social media companies and told them, ‘You must censor these people and these ideas,’ and effectively said, ‘Or else,’” the Stanford doctor added.
Bhattacharya’s comments came one day after the Court in a 6-3 decision in favor of the defendants of the case.
Conservatives are under attack. Contact your representatives and demand that Big Tech be held to account to mirror the First Amendment while providing transparency, clarity on so-called “hate speech” and equal footing for conservatives. If you have been censored, contact us using MRC Free Speech America’s contact form, and help us hold Big Tech accountable.
