U.S judge restricts Biden administration from communicating with social media companies to moderate their content

A court filing revealed that a U.S. federal judge issued a restriction on certain agencies and officials in President Joe Biden’s administration from engaging in meetings and communications with social media companies to moderate their content.

The injunction was a response to a lawsuit filed by Republican attorneys general from Louisiana and Missouri. They argued that government officials had gone too far in their attempts to encourage social media platforms to address posts that they believed could contribute to vaccine hesitancy during the COVID-19 pandemic or disrupt elections.

According to the ruling, government agencies such as the Department of Health and Human Services and the FBI were prohibited from communicating with social media companies for the purpose of pressuring or inducing the removal, deletion, suppression, or reduction of content that contained protected free speech, as guaranteed by the Free Speech Clause of the First Amendment.

A White House official stated that the Justice Department was reviewing the order and would evaluate its options.

The order specifically named officials like Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and Jen Easterly, the head of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, in its list of restrictions.

Judge Terry Doughty, in an order filed with the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Louisiana, did allow for certain exceptions to the communication restrictions. These exceptions included communications related to national security risks and criminal activity.

The Washington Post was the first to report on the injunction.

This order represents a victory for Republicans who had sued the Biden administration, accusing it of using the COVID-19 health crisis and the threat of misinformation as a pretext to suppress views that disagreed with the government.

U.S. officials have stated that their intention was to combat misinformation about COVID vaccines in order to prevent unnecessary deaths.

Facebook, Meta Platforms (formerly known as Facebook), Twitter, and Alphabet’s YouTube did not provide immediate comments in response to requests for comment.