The Biden administration took its war on free speech to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Former President Joe Biden’s Department of Justice lobbied the Court to side with censorship and against the First Amendment. The Biden administration did this by exercising the solicitor general’s privilege to argue to the Court in cases the federal government was not a party to.
Legal scholar Jonathan Turley condemned the administration’s approach in exclusive comments to MRC. “The Biden Administration was the most anti-free speech administration since John Adams,” he remarked. “The default of the Solicitor General often seemed to be the curtailment of free speech. Where the Biden Administration adopted the most robust view of other rights such as abortion, it was decidedly minimalist when it came to the right of free speech.”
Included below are four examples of when Biden’s solicitor general did just that.
- Americans for Prosperity Foundation v. Bonta
In an attack on the First Amendment right to anonymous speech, Biden’s Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar contended in Americans for Prosperity Foundation v. Bonta that governments could order the doxxing of donors to private, non-partisan, non-profit organizations.
The case centered around California’s efforts to expose the donors to the 501(c)(3) organizations Americans for Prosperity Foundation and Thomas More Law Center and put them in a state database. Notably, California has a history of leaking donor names, causing them harassment and threats.
Prelogar told the Court that state officials should have discretion to decide which organizations got exemptions from the doxxing requirement, with the state subjectively deciding whether they faced “harassment, threats or reprisal.” When asked by Chief Justice John Roberts what number of threats to donors would provide sufficient evidence to warrant an exemption, Prelogar flippantly replied: “I don't think that it turns on a particular number.”
- Mahanoy Area School District v. B.L.
In Mahanoy Area School District v. B.L., the Office of the Solicitor General contended that public school officials, including university administrators, could implement speech codes that applied to students’ private speech occurring off-campus.
The specific case pertained to a Pennsylvania student who was banned from participating in extracurricular activities due to a self-deleting message she sent to friends via Snapchat from home on a weekend. The message read, in its entirety, “f-ck school f-ck softball f-ck cheer f-ck everything.”
The deputy solicitor general even argued the off-campus speech codes would be valid if they restricted “political speech,” arguing such speech restrictions helped protect the “values of team building and mutual support.”
- Counterman v. Colorado
In Counterman v. Colorado, the Office of the Solicitor General insisted that when determining whether speech was threatening, a court should consider the personal opinion of the person who felt victimized by the speech instead of the actual intent of the speaker.
The specific case dealt with a professional musician who felt intimidated by a critic’s social media comments. The ruling opened the door to the criminalization of speech if someone claims that said speech makes them feel unsafe (such as misgendering, which many people claim is a form of intimidation). The partial dissent noted that the ruling may likely fall hardest on “religious and cultural minorities” who use “language that is more susceptible to being misinterpreted by outsiders” as “dangerous.”
- City of Austin v. Reagan National Advertising
In City of Austin v. Reagan National Advertising, the Office of the Solicitor General contended that governments could impose content-based restrictions on public speech.
The specific case centered around an Austin “sign code.” The “sign code” permitted billboards that advertised on-premises services but prohibited those that promoted off-premises services. As a result, regulators had to look at the speech on each sign to subjectively determine whether it was compliant with the law.
In his dissent, Justice Clarence Thomas noted that the Office of the Solicitor General’s argument may lead to “a Sign Code compliance manager who disliked [a] Church’s substantive teachings deploying the Sign Code to make it more difficult for the Church to inform the public of the location of its services.”
Conservatives are under attack! Contact your representatives and demand they investigate Elizabeth Prelogar and Big Tech’s censorship. If you have been censored, contact us using CensorTrack’s contact form, and help us hold government and Big Tech accountable.
