Supreme Court Stuns Conservatives with Ruling on Censorship

Several days ago, I made a post predicting how I thought the biggest cases on the Supreme Court would come down.

Of all the predictions I made, one of the two that I was most certain about I got wrong, horribly wrong.

That being how the Supreme Court would rule in the government censorship case.

Egg on My Face

The ruling came down 6-3 in favor of the government, sort of.

Basically, the case was tossed out because of the old legal standby… standing.

Trump-appointed Justice Amy Comey Barrett, Chief Justice Roberts, Trump-appointed Justice Brett Kavanaugh, and all three liberal justices ruled that the red state AGs that filed the suit did not have standing in the case.

Barrett, who penned the majority opinion, wrote, “The plaintiffs, without any concrete link between their injuries and the defendants’ conduct, ask us to conduct a review of the years-long communications between dozens of federal officials, across different agencies, with different social-media platforms, about different topics.

"This Court’s standing doctrine prevents us from ‘exercis[ing such] general legal oversight’ of the other branches of Government.

“We therefore reverse the judgment of the Fifth Circuit and remand the case for further proceedings consistent with this opinion."

In his dissent, Justice Alito hit the nail on the head, stating that this ruling “permits the successful campaign of coercion in this case to stand as an attractive model for future officials who want to control what the people say, hear, and think.”

He also described the communications between Facebook and the administration, writing, “Facebook’s responses resembled that of a subservient entity determined to stay in the good graces of a powerful taskmaster.

“When criticized, Facebook representatives whimpered that they ‘thought we were doing a better job’ but promised to do more going forward…And when denounced as ‘killing people,’ Facebook responded by expressing a desire to ‘work together collaboratively’ with its accuser.”

The only positive aspect of this entire mess is that, because the court ruled the plaintiff did not have standing, another party can bring the case.

My question is this… if a state attorney general representing his constituents in the matter does not have standing to rein in the federal government’s overreach, exactly who does?

Hopefully, that is a question that legal experts will be able to answer in the very near future.

If not, we have become an Orwellian society with state-run media.