I never thought I would live to see the Supreme Court issue such an appalling decision against free speech. Government officials now have a free hand to decide what we can and cannot hear regarding life and death situations such as COVID or global warming… or anything else affecting our lives.
Justice Samuel Alito’s dissent says it best. Read the below, and let’s do everything in our power to get this dreadful ruling reversed.
For months in 2021 and 2022, a coterie of officials at the highest levels of the Federal Government continuously harried and implicitly threatened Facebook with potentially crippling consequences if it did not comply with their wishes about the suppression of certain COVID–19-related speech. Facebook repeatedly yielded. As a result Hines [the plaintiff] was indisputably injured, and due to the officials’ continuing efforts, she was threatened with more of the same when she brought suit. These past and threatened future injuries were caused by and traceable to censorship that the officials coerced, and the injunctive relief she sought was an available and suitable remedy. This evidence was more than sufficient to establish Hines’s standing to sue… and consequently, we are obligated to tackle the free speech issue that the case presents. The Court, however, shirks that duty and thus permits the successful campaign of coercion in this case to stand as an attractive model for future officials who want to control what the people say, hear, and think.
That is regrettable. What the officials did in this case was more subtle than the ham-handed censorship found to be unconstitutional in [National Rifle Association of America v. Vullo, 602 U. S. 175 (2024)], but it was no less coercive. And because of the perpetrators’ high positions, it was even more dangerous. It was blatantly unconstitutional, and the country may come to regret the Court’s failure to say so. Officials who read today’s decision together with Vullo will get the message. If a coercive campaign is carried out with enough sophistication, it may get by. That is not a message this Court should send.
Carl B. Barney
August 7, 2024