Murthy v. Missouri
603 U.S. 43 (2024)
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Rule of Law:
To establish Article III standing for a preliminary injunction against government officials for allegedly coercing social media platforms to censor speech, plaintiffs must demonstrate a substantial risk of imminent future injury that is fairly traceable to a specific government defendant's actions and likely to be redressed by the injunction.
Facts:
- Social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube had longstanding content moderation policies against false and misleading information, which they began applying to COVID-19 and election-related content in 2020.
- Beginning in early 2021, various federal officials and agencies, including the White House, Surgeon General, CDC, FBI, and CISA, began communicating extensively with these platforms about misinformation on their sites.
- White House officials and the Surgeon General frequently contacted platforms, primarily in 2021, expressing concern that the platforms were drivers of vaccine hesitancy, questioning their policies, and publicly calling for them to take more aggressive action against misinformation.
- The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) communicated with platforms to alert them to COVID-19 misinformation trends, flagged example posts, and provided fact checks.
- The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) communicated with platforms about potential foreign influence campaigns and election-related misinformation ahead of the 2020 and 2022 elections.
- The individual plaintiffs—three doctors, a news website owner (Jim Hoft), and a healthcare activist (Jill Hines)—had their social media posts regarding COVID-19 or election integrity removed, demoted, or flagged by various platforms between 2020 and 2023.
- The states of Missouri and Louisiana alleged that social media platforms had suppressed the speech of their state officials and citizens on these topics.
Procedural Posture:
- The States of Missouri and Louisiana, along with five individual social-media users, sued dozens of Executive Branch officials and agencies in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Louisiana.
- The plaintiffs moved for a preliminary injunction to prevent the defendants from pressuring social media platforms to censor protected speech.
- Following extensive discovery, the District Court granted a broad preliminary injunction against the government defendants.
- The government defendants appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.
- The Fifth Circuit affirmed in part, upholding the injunction but narrowing its scope and wording, finding the plaintiffs had standing and were likely to succeed on the merits.
- The government defendants (petitioners in this case) applied to the U.S. Supreme Court for an emergency stay of the injunction and filed a petition for a writ of certiorari.
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Issue:
Do the individual social media users and state plaintiffs have Article III standing to obtain a preliminary injunction against federal officials for allegedly pressuring social media platforms to censor their speech?
Opinions:
Majority - Justice Barrett
No, the plaintiffs have not established Article III standing because they failed to demonstrate a substantial risk of future injury that is traceable to the government defendants and redressable by an injunction. To establish standing, plaintiffs must show a concrete, particularized, and imminent injury; that the injury is fairly traceable to the challenged government action; and that a favorable ruling would likely redress the injury. The plaintiffs' claims fail primarily on traceability and redressability. They did not provide specific evidence linking their past content moderation experiences to the actions of particular government defendants, especially since the platforms had their own independent content policies predating the government's communications. The record shows the platforms often exercised their own judgment. Furthermore, the intense government communications of 2021 had significantly subsided by the time the lawsuit was filed, making the threat of imminent future government-caused harm speculative. Finally, an injunction against the government is unlikely to redress the alleged harm, as the platforms would remain free to enforce their own policies independently. The plaintiffs' 'right to listen' theory is also too generalized to establish a concrete injury.
Dissenting - Justice Alito
Yes, the plaintiffs, particularly Jill Hines, established standing to sue. The record demonstrates a far-reaching and successful government campaign to coerce social media platforms into censoring disfavored speech, constituting a grave First Amendment violation. The majority imposes a new and heightened standard for traceability, ignoring the clear, predictable effect of the government's unrelenting pressure campaign, which included thinly veiled threats of antitrust action and Section 230 reform. High-ranking officials persistently hectored Facebook, which responded subserviently by altering its policies, directly leading to the censorship of plaintiff Hines's speech. The effects of this coercion persisted through the platforms' changed policies even after direct communications waned, meaning the injury was ongoing and redressable by an injunction. By refusing to address the merits, the Court shirks its duty and permits a successful campaign of coercion to stand as a model for future officials who want to control public discourse.
Analysis:
This decision significantly raises the evidentiary bar for plaintiffs seeking to challenge government 'jawboning' or informal pressure on private companies, particularly social media platforms. By requiring a highly specific, plaintiff-by-defendant causal link, the Court makes broad challenges against alleged government censorship campaigns exceptionally difficult to sustain on standing grounds. The ruling emphasizes the importance of a platform's pre-existing, independent content policies as a factor that can break the chain of causation between government communication and a moderation decision. While it avoids setting a definitive test for when persuasion becomes unconstitutional coercion, the practical effect is to shield a significant amount of government interaction with platforms from judicial review unless plaintiffs can produce 'smoking gun' evidence of direct causation for a specific, imminent harm.
