The Biden administration may have opened itself up to a more expansive ruling on its coordination with social media companies to censor speech by asking the Supreme Court to freeze a federal appeals court’s injunction.
The administration asked the Supreme Court last week to pause the Fifth Circuit’s scaled-back injunction in the free speech lawsuit Missouri v. Biden, which prevents the administration from coercing or encouraging social media companies to censor speech. The Fifth Circuit’s ruling, while finding that the White House, Surgeon General, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the FBI violated the First Amendment, removed the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) and other government officials from the district court’s injunction, and narrowed the language of the injunction itself.
Now, assuming the Supreme Court agrees to review the case on its merits after deciding whether to grant a stay, the justices will have a chance to uphold that ruling, restore the broader district court injunction or do something else.
“The Administration is certainly bold to ask for a stay in the Supreme Court,” Jenin Younes, lead counsel representing the four private plaintiffs on the case for the New Civil Liberties Alliance, told the DCNF. “While ultimately the Fifth Circuit’s