Legal Update: Missouri v. Biden Now Before the Supreme Court

The government appealed the 5th Circuit's injunction. The Supreme Court has until the end of the day tomorrow to decide whether to grant the government's request for a stay or uphold the injunction.

The United States Supreme Court

This week, the government appealed to the Supreme Court, filing a motion to stay the injunction against government censorship granted by the 5th Circuit court in our Missouri v. Biden case (now technically called Murthy v. Missouri since the President himself is no longer a defendant). We filed a response this week petitioning the Supreme Court to allow the injunction to take effect.

Unlike the circuit courts, the Supreme Court does not have to take up an appeal of this kind, which effectively keeps the circuit court ruling in place. As our attorney Jenin Younes explained, the Supreme Court has until tomorrow at midnight to either [1] grant the government's request for a stay; [2] deny it; [3] do nothing (which is effectively [2]).

Clearly we are hoping for [2] or [3], but even if the Court grants the stay, that does not mean our case is over: it means we do not get the preliminary injunction and the case moves forward to the the next phase of merits discovery. Given the amount of evidence we have presented, and the agreement now of four federal judges (the district court judge and a unanimous three judge panel at the fifth circuit), and given the current the judges on the Supreme Court, I anticipate that we will get a favorable ruling upholding the injunction from the highest court in the land.

Journalist Christina Maas, commented on these developments today:

The Supreme Court has been urged by the New Civil Liberties Alliance (NCLA) to uphold a preliminary injunction against members of the federal bureaucracy, an important ruling intended to guard freedom of speech amidst a concerning surge in government-imposed social media censorship.

The injunction in question, originating from the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in the landmark case of Missouri v. Biden, prohibits officials from entities like the White House, the US Surgeon General’s office, the CDC, and the FBI from leveraging their influence over social media platforms to suppress constitutionally safeguarded speech. The Biden administration, unconvinced by the ruling, subsequently presented a request to the nation’s highest court for a stay on its enforcement.

This injunction has been seen as a triumph for a number of NCLA’s clients who have been victims of social media censorship, including Drs. Jay Bhattacharya, Martin Kulldorff and Aaron Kheriaty, alongside Jill Hines. All have suffered blatant social media suppression tactics such as shadow-banning, throttling, de-boosting, and outright censorship, purportedly spearheaded by figures from the Surgeon General and CDC, among other Biden Administration officials.

These censorship activities, designed to suppress dissenting voices regarding issues such as natural immunity to Covid-19, the safety and efficacy of the Covid-19 vaccines, the virus’s origins, and mask mandate effectiveness, have thus far been free of successful counter arguments from the government.

Although the social media platforms’ content moderation policies themselves were not under scrutiny by the plaintiffs, the NCLA did take issue with the government’s illicit attempts to sway the application of these policies. This, they claim, seriously infringed on the rights of their clients to express their diverse opinions in public and denied the American public their right to access differing points of view. US District Judge Terry Doughty made a compelling point in this regard, describing the government’s actions as “arguably the most massive attack against free speech in United States history” and likening it to the notorious Orwellian Ministry of Truth.

Jenin Younes, Litigation Counsel for NCLA, expressed confidence that “the Court will recognize this and uphold the lower courts’ injunction,” having observed the federal administration’s consistent failures, while NCLA’s President and General Counsel, Mark Chenoweth, voiced a fervent critique of the administration’s censorship, saying it was absolutely unacceptable.

I will post an update here soon when we get the ruling from the Supreme Court… stay tuned!

---