Biden Admin Gets Smacked For First Amendment Violations

Photo by Sasun Bughdaryan on Unsplash

On Friday, a federal appeals court delivered an embarrassing defeat to the Biden administration, ruling that the White House likely infringed upon a fundamental constitutional right during the COVID-19 pandemic.

In its decision on Friday, the United States Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans declared that the White House, surgeon general, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) had, in fact, unconstitutionally forced Big Tech to censor and suppress protected speech, finding that the Biden administration’s efforts affected how social media platforms responded to posts about COVID during Biden’s first year in office.

“We find that the White House, acting in concert with the Surgeon General’s office, likely coerced the platforms to make their moderation decisions … and significantly encouraged the platforms’ decisions,” the three-judge panel wrote in its ruling. “We find that the FBI, too, likely coerced the platforms into moderating content, and encouraged them to do so by effecting changes to their moderation policies, both in violation of the First Amendment.”

The decision changed a preliminary injunction from a lower court that prevented various government officials from pressuring social media platforms to remove or restrict content. The new order maintains some of the lower court’s reasoning but narrows the restrictions imposed on the White House, surgeon general, CDC, and FBI.

According to a report from The Washington Post, the Biden administration is considering an appeal but has yet to decide.

“This Administration has promoted responsible actions to protect public health, safety, and security when confronted by challenges like a deadly pandemic and foreign attacks on our elections,” a White House spokesman said. “Our consistent view remains that social media platforms have a critical responsibility to take account of the effects their platforms are having on the American people, but make independent choices about the information they present.”

The evidence against the Biden administration, which included several emails and statements, was quite damning. According to The Post, “The judges say that the officials’ were not shy in their requests,’ calling for posts to be removed ‘ASAP’ and appearing ‘persistent and angry.’ The judges detailed a particularly contentious period in July of 2021, which reached a boiling point when President Biden accused Facebook of ‘killing people.’”

“We find, like the district court, that the officials’ communications — reading them in ‘context, not in isolation’ — were on-the-whole intimidating,” the judges wrote.