SCOTUS: Murthy v Missouri (formerly Missouri v Biden) - Government/Big Tech Censorship

Bombshell Court Order Outlines Proven Government/Big Tech Censorship​

By Tracy Beanz
October 23, 2022

Americans worried about the government conspiring with social media companies to censor their speech aren’t conspiracy theorists. It’s been proven.

Just this past Friday, what appears to be one of the only honest judges left in America ordered several key figures to sit for depositions in a court case brought against the Federal Government by the states of Louisiana and Missouri. In the case, the states allege that several key bureaucracies in the Federal government have conspired with big tech companies to censor free speech on social media platforms.

When the case was filed, the judge granted a very rare expedited discovery. That expedited discovery produced profound results. Now, the parties returned to court to ask the judge to force people who wouldn’t usually be subject to deposition at all, let alone in an expedited manner, to sit for depositions to get them under oath about what they have done.

The judge granted that request, and his order illuminates a conspiracy that spans almost every government institution, in direct contravention of the United States Constitution, and worse than any of us could’ve really imagined.

To summarize, we learned Friday that Anthony Fauci, the State Department, CISA, the CDC, the White House and other government organizations have each engaged in unconstitutional, and quite frankly, Orwellian behavior, and it has been proven (not alleged, proven) that they have acted in this manner. Some gems? The head of CISA has designated your THOUGHTS as “critical infrastructure” within the United States government, and the Census Bureau got involved with tracking down people posting what the ministry of truth considers “Mis, dis, or Mal-information.” CISA is calling your thoughts “Cognitive Infrastructure,” and the Census Bureau is somehow assisting the government with censoring facts it doesn’t like.

Those are only two points of a wide ranging decision that you absolutely must read. I adapted the column from a thread I did on Truth Social. Check it out, and pray for this judge.

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I promised you a thread on this order in the Missouri v. Biden case, and oh, a thread you shall receive. This order is absolutely breathtaking, and judges don’t often make declarations of “fact” in a still to be decided case. He does here.

Some background- expedited depositions are relatively unheard of, and deposition of federal officials are even MORE unheard of. They usually don’t happen. This will be a long one and will take a bit so grab some coffee!

Here is the ORDER if you want to read along with it.

Goldhedge said:

Americans worried about the government conspiring with social media companies to censor their speech aren’t conspiracy theorists. It’s been proven.

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That is not what the court order means. Whoever wrote that write-up is either incapable of understanding what the court order says, or is intentionally mischaracterizing it. Read the order for yourself (link provided above). It doesn't mean the plaintiff's case was proven. It means the court believes the defendants have sufficient claim to facts pertaining to the issue of the case that they should be deposed (to gather facts/evidence for the court case).

Looks to be an interesting case. One to watch going forward.

(zuckerberg) already pulled that curtain back. freely admitting that fedgov was 'advising' him/fb on things they wanted censored

everything else from here is just proving the known

More on this subject...

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So, once the judge ordered expedited discovery, the government shenanigans began.

The government (Defendants in this case) started filing motions to stop people from being deposed, and in other cases to delay it due to circumstances they outline that are inane and ridiculous. I will detail these in this thread, because I feel like a deep dive follow of this case is something everyone needs.

Then, they filed a mandamus in the appellate court to stop the depositions altogether. The Plaintiffs (MO and LA) consented to a SHORT delay in deposition, bringing them to early Dec.

That wasn’t good enough, of course, so the Defendants filed a motion to stay the depositions and outline all of their nonsense reasons why they would be IRREPARABLY harmed by having to expedite their depositions. They also claimed that the appellate court may rule that the parties won’t have to sit for deposition at all, and that some of the material is privileged- all of which the judge had ALREADY addressed.

Judges don’t like that. Today, the judge ruled on their request.

He ruled that their request for a stay was DENIED, which means that no matter what happens in the appellate court, they must sit for these depositions, because as the judge so eloquently writes, the HARM they are causing to Americans far supersedes any of their nonsense excuses. I am about to do a run down on this 7 page order now, so you have the sauce, but that is a summary.

MOST. IMPORTANT. CASE. IN. DECADES for Free speech and government overreach. Keep reading.
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Government Needs Both the Ability to Talk to Social Media Platforms and Clear Limits, EFF Argues in Brief to Appellate Court​

SAN FRANCISCO—Government input into social media platforms’ decisions about user content raises serious First Amendment concerns and the government must be held accountable for violations, but not all such communications are improper, Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) argued in an appellate brief filed today.

“Government co-option of the content moderation systems of social media companies is a serious threat to freedom of speech,” the brief notes, although “there are clearly times when it is permissible, appropriate, and even good public policy for government agencies and officials to non-coercively communicate with social media companies about the user speech they publish on their sites.”
More here:

A federal appeals court on Friday upheld key parts of a preliminary injunction against federal interference with content moderation on social media platforms. A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit unanimously agreed that the White House, Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and the FBI had "coerced" or "significantly encouraged" the platforms, "in violation of the First Amendment," to suppress speech that federal officials viewed as dangerously inaccurate or misleading. But the 5th Circuit also said the injunction that U.S. District Judge Terry Doughty issued in July was excessively broad and covered too many agencies.
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The 5th Circuit agreed that the White House, Murthy's office, the FBI, and the CDC were appropriate targets of Doughty's injunction. But it found that Doughty had erred by including the State Department, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), and the the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA).
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More (long):

... The Fifth Circuit gave Judge Doughty's order a serious haircut but left its essence in place. Still unsatisfied, the Solicitor General obtained a further stay from the Supreme Court.

All in all, several hundred pages of legal talk about the US government's right to call on social media to suppress speech.

As a public service, Cybertoonz has reduced the entire controversy to four panels.

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... the panel is now reconsidering (thanks to Howard Bashman [How Appealing] for the pointer), though who knows whether this will be a major change or only a minor one. Note that the petition that the panel just granted was filed by the challengers (Missouri et al.), and argues that the panel erred in finding no First Amendment violation by the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency and the State Department's Global Engagement Center.
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^ Talk about Missouri v Biden starts at 19:44. If you prefer to read, you can click through to Youtube, expand the description for the video and click on the "show transcript" button. A transcript window appears in the top right (on desktop) that lets you read/skim a transcript of the conversation.

Supreme Court takes on social media: First Amendment fight over 'censorship' is on the docket​

WASHINGTON – The Supreme Court on Friday agreed to decide challenges to laws in Texas and Florida that would limit the ability of platforms like Facebook, YouTube and X to moderate content – entering into a deeply partisan fray that could change the way millions of Americans interact with social media during an election year.

The state laws at issue in the cases, both of which have been temporarily blocked by federal courts, severely limit the ability of social media companies to kick users off their platforms or remove individual posts − even if those posts spread a foreign government's misinformation or provide false medical advice. Trade groups representing the nation's social media companies say the state laws would "transform speech on the internet as we know it today."
More:

On Friday, the U.S. Supreme Court stayed a preliminary injunction aimed at preventing federal officials from unconstitutionally interfering with content moderation decisions by social media platforms. At the same time, the Court agreed to decide the merits of the case, Murthy v. Missouri, during its current term. The stay will remain in place until the justices resolve that case, so the Biden administration meanwhile is free to resume contacts with social media companies that a federal judge and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit concluded were probably inconsistent with the First Amendment.

Justice Samuel Alito, joined by Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch, objected to the Court's "unreasoned" stay, saying the government had failed to show that it would suffer "irreparable harm" if the 5th Circuit's injunction remained in place while the case was pending. "Government censorship of private speech is antithetical to our democratic form of government, and therefore today's decision is highly disturbing," Alito wrote. "Despite the Government's conspicuous failure to establish a threat of irreparable harm, the majority stays the injunction and thus allows the defendants to persist in committing the type of First Amendment violations that the lower courts identified."
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More (long):

pmbug said:

More (long):

SCOTUS will decide when the government's social media meddling violates the First Amendment

The justices agreed to consider whether the Biden administration's efforts to suppress online "misinformation" were unconstitutional.

reason.com

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So far past Fascism it isn't funny.

The Supreme Court should clarify standards for determining if the government permissibly advised or convinced social media companies to censor content from 2020 to 2022, or impermissibly coerced or threatened sites in violation of the First Amendment, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) said in a brief filed today
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More:

SCOTUS issued a 6–3 decision in Murthy v. Missouri, holding that the plaintiffs lack standing.


Full decision here:

Straight Down the Middle — Breaking Down Murthy v. Missouri and Social Media Censorship​

Jul 1, 2024

In this episode, I discuss the Supreme Court's ruling in Murthy v. Missouri. Along the way, we'll talk about social media censorship, the legality of mandates, and the state action doctrine.

26:51

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