On Friday, the Biden administration lost yet another case in regard to First Amendment rights and censorship.
The court upheld a lower court ruling that has placed an injunction on several government agencies as well as specific Biden administration officials, reported Fox News.
While it was clearly a win, there is one aspect of the decision that is not sitting well with a former Trump official.
Stop Censoring People
It is now well documented how the Biden administration was working with social media platforms to silence dissenting opinions.
The FBI, the CDC, and numerous Biden officials were told that they "shall take no actions, formal or informal, directly or indirectly, to coerce or significantly encourage social-media companies to remove, delete, suppress, or reduce, including through altering their algorithms, posted social-media content containing protected free speech.
"That includes, but is not limited to, compelling the platforms to act, such as by intimating that some form of punishment will follow a failure to comply with any request, or supervising, directing, or otherwise meaningfully controlling the social-media companies' decision-making processes."
The one agency that was exempt from the ruling was the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA).
Mike Benz, the former Deputy Assistant Secretary for International Communications and Information Policy, commented on this on Twitter…
The utter insanity of CISA being exempt from the new terms of the censorship injunction under the Missouri v. Biden ruling is fully explained in this video: https://t.co/VcuGr54fic
— Mike Benz (@MikeBenzCyber) September 9, 2023
The CISA's Brandon Whales responded that the agency never censored anyone, and he may be technically correct.
Notice I used the word "technically" there because this is all semantics.
Ultimately, it was the social media platforms that censored people, but CISA surely pointed them in the right direction, most notably against right-leaning publications and the likes of Charlie Kirk, Tom Fitton, Jack Posobiec, Mark Levin, James O'Keefe, and Sean Hannity.
Having lost the appeal, the Biden administration has 10 days from the ruling to file for a Supreme Court review.
