Howard Cooper offers analysis of federal court ruling barring government contact with social media companies
Howard M. Cooper in Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly provided commentary on a recent federal court ruling restricting federal officials from contacting social media companies to moderate content.
The federal judge in Louisiana determined that the federal government exceeded its powers in encouraging social media companies to address potential misinformation about vaccines, elections, and other topics.
In issuing an injunction in the case brought by the Republican attorneys general of Missouri and Louisiana, the judge ruled that government agencies like the Department of Health and Human Services and the FBI could not talk to social media companies for “the purpose of urging, encouraging, pressuring, or inducing in any manner the removal, deletion, suppression, or reduction of content containing protected free speech” under the First Amendment.
In his remarks to Lawyers Weekly, Mr. Cooper said the ruling “is breathtakingly overbroad and dangerous. It bars critical government officials from participating in the discussion about how best to respond to a once in a century public health crisis, preventing them from even ‘urging’ or ‘encouraging’ social media companies to avoid publishing potentially harmful misinformation. This is an unbounded and sweeping prior restraint of speech.”
Mr. Cooper further observed that the decision “is also transparently political. The Court expresses its concern about some grand conspiracy to suppress ‘conservative’ speech and remedies its concern by suppressing what it no doubt sees as ‘liberal’ speech, as though medicine and health care are political issues. We should all be concerned where this could lead if not reversed.”
The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has issued a stay of the ruling pending the Biden administration’s appeal.