Our Day in the Supreme Court
My initial reaction to the oral arguments in our Murthy v. Missouri (a.k.a. Missouri v. Biden) case on Monday
As many of you are aware, we had oral arguments on Monday at the Supreme Court in our free speech case challenging government censorship. The hearing has generated a lot of commentary in the press in the last day or two—some accurate, some clearly distorted—and I will be adding my own extensive commentary in the coming weeks. It’s been a whirlwind, with press interviews on Monday, a panel discussion in DC yesterday, and a talk tonight on the case in Connecticut for the Brownstone Institute. I will put pen to paper when I return home and give you more details and analysis; but for now I wanted to share a brief interview and press conference where I gave my immediate reaction to Monday’s hearing.
My friend and censorship research colleague Andrew Lowenthal sat with me and co-plaintiff Jay Bhattacharya Monday afternoon for the 15-minute quick rundown of the hearing:
NCLA’s press conference has brief remarks from me, two of the other co-plaintiffs and two of our NCLA attorneys.
As soon as it’s uploaded I’ll share our more detailed hour-long “Lunch and Law” panel discussion that hosted yesterday at NCLA with me, Jay, and lawyers Jenin Younes and Mark Chenoweth. In the meantime, here are some of our initial reactions:
“Our clients, who include top doctors and scientists, were censored for social media posts that turned out to be factually accurate, depriving the public of valuable perspectives during a public health crisis. We’re optimistic that the majority will look at the record and recognize that this was a sprawling government censorship enterprise without precedent in this country, and that this cannot be permitted to continue if the First Amendment is to survive.”
— Jenin Younes, Litigation Counsel, NCLA“I stand here representing the hundreds of millions of Americans who are not medical professionals, academics, or journalists but who simply knew that what was happening in America was not right. We went to social media to voice our opinions and were silenced by government employees who bullied social media snowflakes into silencing our voices. The government has no authority to police our opinions; they are protected speech. I would argue the government is the source of misinformation, and it is our responsibility as Americans to make every effort to correct that.”
— Jill Hines, NCLA Client“Just down the street, the Constitution of the United States sits in the Archives. If Americans don’t stand up and defend our constitutional rights, it is just a piece of paper. I am honored to be here with NCLA and my co-plaintiffs to defend the constitutional right of free speech, which has been systematically suppressed by the federal government. I trust that the Supreme Court will do the right thing and uphold the injunction against government censorship of constitutionally protected speech.”
— Dr. Aaron Kheriaty, NCLA Client, Fellow and Director, Bioethics and American Democracy Program, Ethics and Public Policy Center“During the Covid era, the government promulgated misinformation on lockdowns, school closures, immunity, risk stratification, Covid vaccine efficacy against infection, and Covid vaccine harm. The First Amendment should have protected the American people by permitting the public to loudly correct the government on these matters. Instead, the government censored Americans who were telling the truth. In the Murthy v. Missouri case, the Supreme Court has the opportunity to restore the First Amendment in this country. I hope it does so.”
— Dr. Jayanta Bhattacharya, NCLA Client, Professor at the Stanford University School of Medicine in the Department of Health Policy“The First Amendment does not allow the government to abridge speech based on whether the speech is true or false. That is what the government did here, and if that is allowed then the First Amendment is a dead letter.”
— Mark Chenoweth, President, NCLA
Stay tuned here for much more on this…
It's not really whether opinions turned out to be accurate or not. It's about the government censoring them. Have any of the Justices had a phone call or visit from the FBI suggesting they not talk about something for the good of the nation? They may have ice water in their veins and don't consider that coercion. But the nerds who run the algorithms have likely smoked weed or know that the FBI can make life expensive and unpleasant. "We just want to talk with you about how your platform may be costing American lives, but no pressure. Just a friendly chat but don't forget, lying to us about anything is a crime."
Supreme Irony, but no surprise that the government’s pronouncements were utterly false at every turn.