US Judge Limits Biden Officials’ Contact With Social Media Firms

Biden officials might have to look elsewhere to moderate people's posts.

A U.S. federal judge recently restricted some agencies and Biden officials from meeting and communicating with social media companies to moderate their content.

The restriction is the latest development in the ongoing First Amendment battles in U.S. courts.

Content Moderation By Biden Officials

In a 155-page ruling, Judge Terry Doughty restricts White House officials and some government agencies, such as the Department of Health and Human Services and the FBI, from contacting social media companies over "content containing protected free speech," per the BBC.

The ruling said that some government agencies and officials could not talk to social media companies to urge, encourage, pressure, or induce them in any manner to remove delete, suppress or reduce content containing protected free speech under the Free Speech Clause of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, per a Reuters report.

It also named Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency head Jen Easterly as a few of the officials being restricted by the new ruling. However, he made a few exceptions for communications between government officials and the companies, including warning about risks to national security and criminal activity.

Judge Doughty's ruling follows a lawsuit by the Republican attorneys general of Missouri and Louisiana, Eric Schmitt and Jeff Landry, which alleges that U.S. officials had pressured social media platforms to address posts on certain topics, including COVID-19 policies and election security.

According to him, the Attorneys Generals provided evidence that not only supported their claims but also painted an "almost dystopian scenario" where the U.S. Government seemingly assumed a role similar to an Orwellian 'Ministry of Truth' during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Regardless, the ruling is a win for Republicans who had sued the Biden administration for using the COVID health crisis and the threat of misinformation as an excuse to restrict posts that disagreed with the government.

A White House official said that the Department of Justice was reviewing the order and would evaluate its options regarding the ruling. Meanwhile, Google, Twitter, and Meta have yet to comment on the ruling or have outright declined to do so.

The Battle For Free Speech On Social Media

The First Amendment battles on social media platforms have escalated since Twitter CEO Elon Musk released the Twitter Files, which show "what really ahppened" behind the scenes regarding content moderation decisions at Twitter before he bought it in late 2022, per CBS News.

While the Twitter Files reveal that Democrats and the feds have been contacting Twitter to "muzzle conservatives online," the same is also true with Republicans, who have been doing the same thing the Democrats and feds do, according to the former trump administration officials and Twitter employees Rolling Stone talked to.

A former top aide to a senior Trump official even said that the investigations on censorship in social media by Republicans were strange because it was all about the exact same things they did when Trump was still in office.

"It was normal," the former aide added.