Global Courant
The Biden administration is asking a court to suspend a preliminary injunction to prevent them from meeting with tech companies over social media censorship.
In a court memo filed Thursday, the Biden administration argued that it suffered “irreparable damage” because the injunction could prevent it from “working with social media companies on initiatives to cause grave harm to the American people and our democratic processes”.
“This immediate and continuing harm to the government outweighs the risk of injury to plaintiffs if an adjournment is granted, and for the same reason, adjournment is in the public interest,” the court memo said.
U.S. District Judge Terry Doughty chose Independence Day to issue a court order blocking multiple government agencies and government officials. In his words, they are forbidden to meet or contact each other social media companies for the purpose of “encouraging, coercing or inducing in any way the removal, removal, suppression or reduction of content containing protected freedom of expression”.
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US President Joe Biden speaks during a State of the Union address at the Capitol in Washington, DC, US, on Tuesday, February 7, 2023. (Jacquelyn Martin/AP/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
The injunction also prohibits the agencies and officials from pressuring social media companies “in any way” to attempt to suppress posts.
Doughty’s order blocks the government from taking any such actions pending further arguments in his court in a lawsuit brought by Republican attorneys general in Missouri and Louisiana.
The Justice Department has appealed, saying it would also seek to suspend the court’s order.
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Karine Jean-Pierre, White House press secretary, said: “We certainly disagree with this decision.” She declined to comment further.
A government official said there was some concern about the impact the decision would have on efforts to counter domestic extremism — regarded by the intelligence community as a greatest threat to the nation — but that it would depend on how long the order is in effect. remains and what steps the platforms themselves take.
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The lawsuit alleges that government officials used the possibility of favorable or unfavorable regulatory action to force social media platforms to publish what the government perceived as misinformation on a variety of topics, including COVID-19 vaccines, President Biden’s son, Hunter and election integrity, to press the head.
The order — and Doughty’s accompanying reasons for saying the government “appears to have assumed a role akin to an Orwellian ‘Ministry of Truth'” — were hailed by conservatives as a victory for free speech and a blow to the censorship.
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Social media companies routinely remove posts that violate their own standards, but are rarely forced by the US government.
Administration lawyers in previous court cases have called the lawsuit an attempt to silence the freedom of speech of government officials themselves.
Doughty has previously spoken out against the Biden administration in other high-profile cases involving oil drilling and vaccine mandates.
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In 2021, he issued a nationwide block on a Biden administration requirement that healthcare workers be vaccinated against COVID-19. A panel of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals narrowed the area covered by the order to 14 states that were plaintiffs in the lawsuit.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Bradford Betz is a Fox News Digital breaking reporter covering crime, political issues and much more.
