Murthy v. Missouri

Missouri v. Biden
Court	United States District Court for the Western District of Louisiana
Full case name	Missouri, et al., v. Joseph R. Biden, et al.
Decided	July 4, 2023
Court membership
Judge sitting	Terry A. Doughty

Missouri v. Biden (No. 3:22-CV-01213) is a United States federal case filed in the Western District of Louisiana involving the First Amendment. The states of Missouri and Louisiana filed suit against the U.S. government, led by Missouri's former attorney general and current U.S. Senator Eric Schmitt, asserting that the government's contact with social media services to request removal of misinformation was a violation of free speech and amounted to censoring of conservative views and criticism of President Joe Biden's administration's policies.

On July 4, 2023, Judge Terry A. Doughty issued a preliminary injunction against several agencies and members of the Biden administration. The U.S. government intends to appeal the decision.

Background

Since around 2020, Missouri Attorney General (at the time) Eric Schmitt had been filing numerous lawsuits against the Biden administration, with a total of 25 suits as of October 2022. According to Schmitt's senate campaign website, these suits were filed to hold the Biden administration accountable, while Schmitt later said "The Attorney General's Office standing in between Missourians and a radical, overreaching government is a hallmark of federalism, and states have a vital duty to keep the federal government in check." Among targets of Schmitt's lawsuits included the adminstation's policies on oil & gas production, Biden's planned debt forgiveness of student loans, and mask mandates during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The present lawsuit was one of those filed by Schmitt along with Louisiana's attorney general Jeff Landry in May 2022 in the United States District Court for the Western District of Louisiana. The lawsuit asserted that President Joe Biden and his administration were "allegedly working with social media giants such as Meta, Twitter, and Youtube to censor and suppress free speech, including truthful information, related to COVID-19, election integrity, and other topics, under the guise of combating 'misinformation.'" The plaintiffs obtained subpoenas in October and November 2022 of that year from former and current members of the Biden adminstration, including Kate Starbird who served as an academic advisor to the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. Additional plantiffs were also added around October 2022, which included Jim Hoft, the owner of The Gateway Pundit, a right-wing fake news site.

Around December 2022, Elon Musk bought out Twitter and significantly altered the way the social media service operated. Among his actions, he worked with conservative independent journalists to release the "Twitter Files", which Musk and the journalists asserts that parts of the U.S. government were working directly with Twitter to suppress free speech related to election fraud and misinformation around the COVID pandemic. The Republican party had already believed that their views were being suppressed on social media, leading the Republican-controlled House of Representatives to hold a set of hearings in March 2023 about the Democrat-controlled administration of "weaponizing" social media for their purposes. Schmitt and Landry were among those that testified before the committee with information from their case's discovery, bring the existing of their ongoing lawsuit to the forefront.

Hearings for the case were held in May 2023. Judge Doughty issued his ruling on July 4, 2023, issuing a preliminary injunction against several Biden administration officials from contacting social media services for "the purpose of urging, encouraging, pressuring, or inducing in any manner the removal, deletion, suppression, or reduction of content containing protected free speech." In his 155-page ruling, Doughty stated that "The Plaintiffs are likely to succeed on the merits in establishing that the Government has used its power to silence the opposition. Opposition to COVID-19 vaccines; opposition to COVID-19 masking and lockdowns; opposition to the lab-leak theory of COVID-19; opposition to the validity of the 2020 election; opposition to President Biden’s policies; statements that the Hunter Biden laptop story was true; and opposition to policies of the government officials in power. All were suppressed. It is quite telling that each example or category of suppressed speech was conservative in nature. This targeted suppression of conservative ideas is a perfect example of viewpoint discrimination of political speech. American citizens have the right to engage in free debate about the significant issues affecting the country." He continued that, "If the allegations made by plaintiffs are true, the present case arguably involves the most massive attack against free speech in United States' history. The plaintiffs are likely to succeed on the merits in establishing that the government has used its power to silence the opposition." The U.S. Department of Justice filed its intent to appeal the decision the following day.