The Department of Justice (DOJ) successfully won a temporary court decision that apparently allows the Biden administration to continue censoring Americans on social media while it prepares to go to the U.S. Supreme Court to settle the issue once and for all. The late Friday decision by the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals gave a temporary advantage to the administrative state instead of American freedom of speech.
The DOJ argued in its appeal that the decision by Judge Terry Doughty of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Louisiana restricting the ability for government actors to work with social media companies, such as Twitter and Facebook, to censor posts by Americans would inhibit its ability to do its job and would put an undue burden on the Biden Administration.
Doughty, on the other hand, carved out multiple areas where the government could work with these same companies. He wrote it in English and everything.
IT IS FURTHER ORDERED that the following actions are NOT prohibited by this Preliminary Injunction:
(1) informing social-media companies of postings involving criminal activity or criminal conspiracies;
(2) contacting and/or notifying social-media companies of national security threats, extortion, or other threats posted on its platform;
(3) contacting and/or notifying social-media companies about criminal efforts to suppress voting, to provide illegal campaign contributions, of cyber-attacks against election infrastructure, or foreign attempts to influence elections;
(4) informing social-media companies of threats that threaten the public safety or security of the United States;
(5) exercising permissible public government speech promoting government policies or views on matters of public concern;
(6) informing social-media companies of postings intending to mislead voters about voting requirements and procedures;
(7) informing or communicating with social-media companies in an effort to detect, prevent, or mitigate malicious cyber activity;
(8) communicating with social-media companies about deleting, removing, suppressing, or reducing posts on social-media platforms that are not protected free speech by the Free Speech Clause in the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. [emphasis added]
In Doughty’s 155-page decision, he outlined precisely how bureaucracies with the CDC, NIH, DOJ, and FBI flexed on social media companies to unconstitutionally restrict Americans’ speech.
Among the information Doughty ruled had been illegally silenced was discussion of the “lab leak theory” as the source of the COVID-19 pandemic and the gain-of-function funding done through other organizations by Dr. Anthony Fauci. The FBI, the cybersecurity arm of the U.S. government, and other outlets of the U.S. government also used their positions under color of authority to deprive Americans of their free speech rights.
The judge noted what many citizens apparently don’t understand: the government cannot deprive people of free speech through proxies. Indeed, the government suggested to these companies — even as large as Google — that some speech was better left unsaid.
Now the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals has given a temporary stay, allowing the U.S. government to keep doing what it has been doing until the U.S. Supreme Court weighs in. Let’s be clear, in this temporary stay, the 5th Circuit gave deference to governmental agencies over the explicit individual right of an American to speak, which is explicitly noted in the U.S. Constitution as a God-given right.
In the next term, the nation’s highest court will hear the case of Loper Bright Enterprises Inc. v. Raimondo. That case calls into question the so-called Chevron deference in which government bureaucracies are given the nod, the advantage, to explain laws (to their advantage) when laws are unclear.
Though we don’t know all the issues involved in the government’s argument, all we can say is they’d better be damned compelling to silence Americans while we await a decision on whether we can speak or whether Elvis Chan, Tony Fauci, and all the people who worked against American free speech will win the day.
Let’s hope the Constitution wins the next round.
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