Supreme Court Strikes Down Republican Challenge to Biden Administration’s Efforts Urging Social Media Platforms to Remove Disinformation

variety.com:

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor The Supreme Court ruled against a group of conservatives who sued the Biden administration — alleging the White House violated the First Amendment by pressuring Facebook and other tech platforms to remove “disinformation” — saying they failed to show they were harmed by the administration’s efforts.

In the 6-3 ruling issued Wednesday, the Supreme Court said the individual and state plaintiffs in the case did not have standing to seek a preliminary injunction against federal executive-branch officials and agencies over their official communications with social-media companies about the spread of misinformation online. “The plaintiffs fail, by and large, to link their past social-media restrictions and the defendants’ communications with the platforms,” Justice Amy Coney Barrett wrote in the opinion for the majority.

Barrett’s opinion continued, “The plaintiffs, without any concrete link between their injuries and the defendants’ conduct, ask us to conduct a review of the yearslong communications between dozens of federal officials, across different agencies, with different social-media platforms, about different topics.

This court’s standing doctrine prevents us from exercising such general legal oversight of the other branches of government.” In 2022, Republican attorneys general in Missouri and Louisiana together with five social media users sued over the White House’s outreach to social media platforms requesting the removal of certain disinformation.