Media Advisory: Supreme Court Wrongly Lets Stand the Government's Coercion of Social Media

Regarding the Supreme Court’s decision today in Murthy v. Missouri, Free State Foundation President Randolph May issued the following statement:

The majority opinion seems strained in holding that the states and individuals complaining about social media censorship lacked standing. And Justice Alito's dissenting opinion is convincing regarding the merits of the First Amendment claim. By virtue of its very detailed — and chilling — description of the government’s ongoing interactions with Facebook and other leading social media companies, Justice Alito shows that the Biden Administration crossed the line from offering its suggestions regarding the removal of speech it disfavored to threatening retribution if the disfavored speech was not removed. Private entities are free to carry or not carry whatever speech they choose, but when government actions rise to the level of entangled coercion of private entities that they did in this case, then the government violates the First Amendment by suppressing the free speech rights of those censored.