Federal judge bars Biden Administration officials from coordinating with Big Tech on censorship

A federal judge ruled that senior Biden Administration officials will be prohibited from communicating and meeting with social networking companies. The attorneys general of Missouri and Louisiana had brought the case. According to Magistrate Judge Terry A. Doughty’s ruling, the attorneys general “produced evidence of a massive effort by Defendants, from the White House to federal agencies, to suppress speech based on its content.”

The injunction came in response to a lawsuit filed in part by Eric Schmitt (R), now a Missouri senator and former state attorney general. “Big win for the First Amendment on this Independence Day,” he celebrated on Twitter.

“White House officials, CDC & others are stopped cold. We need to continue the fight to take down the Vast Censorship Enterprise. Their view of “misinformation” isn’t an excuse to censor. This is the most important free speech case in a generation. Freedom is on the march”, added the Republican, who reached the Senate at the beginning of 2023 after winning the 2022 elections with 55.4% of the votes.

According to the lawsuit, Joe Biden’s White House pressured social media companies to censor content related to Covid-19. The states claimed this constituted one of “the most egregious violations of the First Amendment in the history of the United States of America.”

The order came from the judge’s pen Terry A. Doughty who Donald Trump nominated as Judge of the United States District Court for the Western District of Louisiana. His nomination passed easily through the Senate, which approved his nomination 98-0 in March 2018.

As for the exceptions, when it comes to Biden officials engaging in conversations with social networking companies, the magistrate included situations where “criminal activity or criminal conspiracies,” “threats to national security, extortion or other threats,” or crimes related to U.S. elections are suspected.