On Thursday, the Justice Department requested that the Supreme Court reverse previous judgments from lower courts that limited the executive branch’s ability to communicate with social media companies.
The injunction granted by the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Louisiana in July was largely sustained by the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals this week. Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar asked the Supreme Court to postpone it. Earlier this year, the district judge had decided that some government organizations and members of the Biden administration should not be permitted to speak with or meet with social media businesses in order to control their content.
The ruling was reached in response to a complaint filed by the Republican attorneys general of Louisiana and Missouri, who claimed that American government authorities had gone too far in pressuring social media companies to address posts about the 2020 election and the COVID-19 vaccination.
The majority of the injunction was trimmed by a U.S. circuit court in New Orleans late last week, but it still mandated that the White House, FBI, and top health officials not “coerce or significantly encourage” social media businesses to take down content that the Biden administration deems to be false information.
In a document submitted on Thursday, the solicitor general stated that the government’s request amounted to “an unprecedented injunction” that “flouts bedrock principles of Article III, the First Amendment, and equity.”
The Fifth Circuit’s rulings have surprising ramifications, according to Prelogar. “The court placed unprecedented limits on the ability of the President’s closest advisors to use the bully pulpit to talk about matters of public concern, on the FBI’s ability to address threats to the Nation’s security, and on the CDC’s ability to provide public health information at platforms’ request.”
Prelogar stated that the initial injunction is “vastly overbroad,” adding that “it covers thousands of federal officers & employees, and it also applies to communications with and across all social media platforms” about content moderation on subjects like criminal law and national security.
The injunction would cause serious and irreparable harm to the government and the general public, she said, if it were permitted to go into effect. Prelogar stated that the Department of Justice plans to petition the court to consider the case by October 13 and added that the court might consider Thursday’s filing as a request to accelerate matters without the need for additional briefings.