A powerful group of leftist entities, including academics, doctors and a lawmaker, are rallying behind the Biden administration’s un-American censorship operations as it battles a pending Supreme Court case.
The influential leftists showed their support for the Biden administration in the form of various friend-of-the-court briefs for the Missouri v. Biden case (renamed Murthy v. Missouri). The briefs dubiously allege that blocking the federal government from influencing social media companies to censor free speech may undermine public health, national security and oddly enough, the First Amendment. The briefs, first reported by Just the News on Dec. 27, stemmed from the legal battle between the Biden administration and the Republican attorneys general of Missouri and Louisiana.
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Among the individuals issuing dire warnings supporting the Biden administration are Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Mark Warner (D-VA), Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, the American Academy of Pediatrics and American Medical Association, Stanford University and U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
Citing alleged foreign attacks, Warner urged the Court to take adverse action against the lower courts’ rulings that found that the federal government violated the First Amendment when it coerced social media companies to censor Americans. “To preserve America’s ability to respond quickly and effectively to foreign malign influence campaigns that target our national security and elections, this Court should reverse the judgment of the Fifth Circuit in relevant part and direct that the preliminary injunction be vacated in its entirety,” Warner claimed. He ignored the injunction’s exceptions designed to allow the government to work with social media companies to protect Americans in cases of national security, election security and foreign interference.
Stanford University, the home of the infamous Stanford Internet Observatory, shamelessly said that the lower courts’ rulings are “plagued by numerous errors of law and fact.” The university claimed that blocking the federal government from colluding with social media companies to censor Americans has “cast a chill across academia as an example of political targeting of disfavored speech by state governments and the federal judiciary.”
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“In reversing the judgment below, the Court should reaffirm the First Amendment’s highest protections for Stanford’s research and speech on matters of public concern, and it should make clear that academic institutions do not become state actors when they communicate or collaborate with government officials,” the university claimed.
The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press — whose steering committee includes reporters from The New York Times, CNN, Politico, and The Associated Press, among others — claimed that the lower courts’ rulings partially banning the government from communicating with social media could somehow undermine the flow of information between the press and the federal government.
Columbia University’s Knight Institute said that the Court should clarify what constitutes coercion by applying a test from the Bantam Books, Inc. v. Sullivan (a 1963 case related to free speech and government coercion). In that case, the Court held that the government merely communicating with publishing companies does not violate the First Amendment. The justices held that a legal threat must take place before running afoul of the First Amendment.
Echoing the previous briefs’ sentiments, the American Academy of Pediatrics and American Medical Association resuscitated alleged COVID-19-related misinformation as reason enough to protect the federal government’s so-called ability to communicate with social media companies in the name of public health. “It is an indisputable scientific fact that vaccinations save lives,” the medical association claimed.
Placing the cherry on top, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce asked the Court to shut down the injunction because it put social media on legal jeopardy “for actions they were coerced to take.” The U.S. Chamber of Commerce claimed that in the event that the First Amendment is being violated, “liability must rest solely with the government.”
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 hate speech and equal footing for conservatives. If you have been censored, contact us using CensorTrack’s contact form, and help us hold Big Tech accountable.
