The Latest On Joe Biden and His Battle to Restrict Online Speech – President Joe Biden has reason to smile, as a federal appeals court applied a temporary pause to a lower court’s order preventing the federal government from pressuring social media companies to censor political activists and journalists.
The “administrative stay” ordered by a New Orleans court allows the government to continue its actions while legal proceedings continue.
The Original Order
On Tuesday, July 4, U.S. District Judge Terry Doughty restricted some federal agencies from communicating and meeting with officials representing social media companies with a view to moderating content.
The injunction came in response to a lawsuit filed by Republican attorneys general from Missouri and Louisiana, who argued that U.S. government officials were going beyond their authority to prevent social media users from expressing views that the Biden administration does not approve of.
The ruling required the Department of Health and Human Services and the FBI, as well as other federal agencies, to cease communications with social media companies for “the purpose of urging, encouraging, pressuring, or inducing in any manner the removal, deletion, suppression, or reduction of content containing protected free speech.”
Biden administration officials responded to the order by defending past behavior, arguing that communication with social media companies was necessary to ensure the prevention of the spread of inaccurate information about elections and the COVID-19 pandemic.
What Happened On Friday
On Friday, July 14, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans granted Biden administration lawyers a request for a stay on the July 4 preliminary injunction that prevented the Biden administration from continuing to communicate with big social media companies.
Lawyers representing the Biden administration argued that the original order was too vague and broad, and attempted to reshape the narrative around the federal government’s controversial – and secretive – efforts to curb online discourse via backchannels with social media executives and officials.
Biden administration attorneys also claimed that the order posed a “grave” public harm by making it difficult for the federal government to stop the flow of what they called online “misinformation.” Lawyers also pushed back at claims that the Biden administration was strongarming social media companies into doing what they say, claiming that there were no threats from the administration.
“The district court identified no evidence suggesting that a threat accompanied any request for the removal of content. Indeed, the order denying the stay — presumably highlighting the ostensibly strongest evidence — referred to ‘a series of public media statements,'” lawyers said.
Jack Buckby is 19FortyFive’s Breaking News Editor. He is a British author, counter-extremism researcher, and journalist based in New York. Reporting on the U.K., Europe, and the U.S., he works to analyze and understand left-wing and right-wing radicalization, and reports on Western governments’ approaches to the pressing issues of today. His books and research papers explore these themes and propose pragmatic solutions to our increasingly polarized society.
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