Steering the Digital Age: The First Amendment, Online Content Moderation, and Murthy v. Missouri

The First Amendment of the United States Constitution provides every citizen with the right to free speech, a cornerstone of American democracy. However, in the recent day and age, the advent of social media has brought about a complex set of challenges in defining the boundaries of the First Amendment's definition, and the government’s role in moderating online content. This piece examines the ongoing legal dispute in the case of Murthy v. Missouri (2023), highlighting the key issues and arguments that surround the case. This discussion will analyze the recent extension of a temporary block by U.S. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito on an order limiting the ability of President Joe Biden's administration to urge social media companies to remove content deemed to be false information about COVID-19 and other public concerns. The block's renewal raises important questions about the appropriate balance between free speech protections and governmental regulation of online content.

Republican attorneys general from Louisiana and Missouri, as well as a number of social media users, filed the complaint in Louisiana, where they accused federal agents of coercively pressuring major social media companies to block conservative-leaning content, in violation of the First Amendment. The platforms in question were X (formerly known to be Twitter), YouTube, and Meta's Facebook. The alleged compulsion mostly targeted posts about COVID-19, pandemic-related lockdowns, and the 2020 election. Many of the posts had expressed opinions which federal officials claimed constituted "misinformation" about the pandemic.[1] By notifying social media sites of content that contravened their own regulations, the Biden administration claimed that its officials had done nothing wrong and were attempting to mitigate the risks associated with internet misinformation.

In July, Chief Judge Terry A. Doughty of of the United States District Court for the Western District of Louisiana imposed an injunction on the Biden administration, after concluding that government agents had put pressure on social media sites to censor certain user-generated information. With the exception of a clause concerning coercion, which was limited, this injunction prohibited the administration's social media postings. This clause forbade the White House, the Surgeon General, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) from "coercing or significantly encouraging" social media sites to delete information.[2]

The injunction was challenged by the Biden administration, which claimed that it continued to place excessive limitations on the government's capacity to address security and public concern issues.[3] Only the clause concerning coercion was left in force after the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit partially vacated the injunction. The Supreme Court's participation proved essential in deciding the outcome of this case.

Justice Samuel Alito, who serves as the circuit justice over cases involving the affected states, prolonged the injunction's temporary ban. Given Justice Alito's extension of his stay of the injunction, the Supreme Court as a whole will have more time to deliberate about the Biden administration's motion to completely invalidate the injunction. The main question at hand is whether government representatives violated the First Amendment's protections for free expression by exerting pressure on social media sites to delete certain posts.

This legal dispute raises fundamental questions regarding the thin line between free speech rights and the government's role in the regulation of online content. The government contends that by regulating online content, they strive to mitigate the hazards of online misinformation by notifying social media companies of content that violate their policies. However, the plaintiffs assert that such actions made by the government constitute an infringement on constitutionally protected speech. The remaining restrictions of the injunction prohibit the government from coercing or actively encouraging the removal of content. The Supreme Court must decide if this limitation strikes a fair balance between the right to free expression and the interests of the government to thwart online falsehoods.