Supreme Court Rejects Injunction Against Feds' Pressuring Platforms on Content

The Supreme Court on June 26, by a 6-3 vote, overturned decisions by lower courts to grant state attorneys general and individual social media users an injunction to stop various federal agencies from encouraging or pressuring social media platforms to remove or suppress content deemed to be misinformation or disinformation on COVID-19, vaccines, and elections on the grounds that none of the parties seeking the injunction had demonstrated likely future harm and therefore lacked standing to obtain an injunction. A federal district court in Louisiana granted a preliminary injunction, and that decision was upheld in part by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit (New Orleans), although the appeals court removed the lower court's injunction against milder efforts such as "urging" content moderation and excluded from the injunction certain agencies that the district judge had included: the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), which the appeals court said was not shown to have ever communicated with the social media platforms; the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, which the appeals court said only attempted to convince, not coerce, the platforms; and the State Department, for which the appeals court said there was no evidence that its communications went beyond educating the platforms about the methods of foreign actors. "To establish standing, the plaintiffs must demonstrate a substantial risk that, in the near future, they will suffer an injury that is traceable to a Government defendant and redressable by the injunction they seek. Because no plaintiff has carried that burden, none has standing to seek a preliminary injunction," she wrote, Murthy v. Missouri, No. 23-411, slip op. at 1 (U.S. June 26, 2024). [...]because the plaintiffs request forward-looking relief, they must face 'a real and immediate threat of repeated injury.' [...]the platforms, acting independently, had strengthened their pre-existing content-moderation policies before the Government defendants got involved," she said, Murthy v. Missouri, No. 23-411, slip op. at 12 (U.S. June 26, 2024).