JEFFERSON CITY — Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey announced that the U.S. Supreme Court has allowed his office to pursue more discovery in a First Amendment case.
In the case, Murthy v. Missouri, Bailey claims that federal officials coerced social media companies into censoring Americans, violating their free speech rights.
The Supreme Court acknowledged First Amendment violations in 2021 and ruled that additional discovery is necessary to investigate further censorship in subsequent years.
Bailey said his office filed suit against many officials to stop what he called the biggest First Amendment violation in the nation's history.
"The record is clear: the deep state pressured and coerced social media companies to take down truthful speech simply because it was conservative," Bailey said in a provided statement. "Today’s ruling does not dispute that. My rallying cry to disappointed Americans is this: Missouri is not done."
Bailey said they are now going back to do more discovery.
"We will remain vigilant to build the wall of separation between tech and state, but I could not be prouder of what my team and this case has exposed so far," Bailey said. "Missouri will continue to lead the way in the fight to defend our most fundamental freedoms."
The case was initiated in 2022 by the Missouri and Louisiana attorneys general and they argued government censorship involving more than 20,000 documents and depositions of high-ranking federal officials, including Dr. Anthony Fauci and FBI Special Agent Elvis Chan.
On March 6, 2023, a motion for preliminary injunction was filed, citing more than 1,400 instances of federal officials allegedly coercing social media companies to suppress free speech.
A federal district court granted the injunction on July 4, 2023, blocking federal officials from further First Amendment violations.
The Fifth Circuit upheld this injunction twice and on June 26, the U.S. Supreme Court allowed more discovery and depositions in this significant First Amendment case.
In the court's opinion, the justices noted that in response to the increasing spread of misinformation during the COVID-19 pandemic and the 2020 election season, social media platforms began enforcing stricter content moderation policies.
These platforms targeted false or misleading information about COVID-19 and the election, frequently in collaboration with various federal agencies. The White House, the Surgeon General, the CDC, the FBI and CISA all communicated with these platforms to address misinformation concerns, according to the opinion.
A group of plaintiffs, including two states and five individual social media users, sued numerous Executive Branch officials and agencies, claiming that the government pressured social media companies to censor their speech, thus violating the First Amendment.
The District Court issued a preliminary injunction, and the Fifth Circuit affirmed in part and reversed in part. The court concluded that the government's coercion or significant encouragement turned the platforms' moderation decisions into state actions and modified the injunction to prohibit such government influence on social media content moderation.
The U.S. Supreme Court held that neither the individual nor the state plaintiffs had Article III standing to seek an injunction. The court noted that for a case to meet the "case or controversy" requirement under Article III, plaintiffs must demonstrate a concrete and particularized injury that is fairly traceable to the challenged action and likely to be redressed by a favorable decision.
The court found the plaintiffs' allegations of potential future injury speculative, as they were based on the platforms' independent actions rather than direct government coercion.
The court emphasized that the plaintiffs failed to link specific instances of past content moderation to the government's actions.
Without demonstrating a substantial risk of future injury directly caused by the government, the plaintiffs could not establish standing for forward-looking relief.
The Supreme Court reversed and remanded the Fifth Circuit's decision, concluding that the plaintiffs did not meet the necessary requirements to challenge the government's role in social media content moderation.
U.S. Supreme Court case number: 23-411