The Supreme Court will hear Missouri v. Biden, the historical free speech case with huge implications for Big Tech platforms. In a short unsigned order on Friday SCOTUS also removed a lower-court injunction limiting Biden administration officials from communicating with tech companies to moderate content. The injunction stems from the original 2022 case filed by Republican AGs in Missouri and Louisiana and four individual plaintiffs alleging their social media posts about COVID were unlawfully removed or suppressed at the behest of federal agencies. Until the case is heard, the restrictions on administration communications with tech platforms will be lifted. Justices Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas, and Neil Gorsuch dissented from the decision to stay the injunction. Alito wrote, “What the Court has done, I fear, will be seen by some as giving the Government a green light to use heavy-handed tactics to skew the presentation of views on the medium that increasingly dominates the dissemination of news… it does not appear that any of the Government’s hypothetical communications would actually be prohibited by the injunction.” He added, “Despite the Government’s conspicuous failure to establish a threat of irreparable harm, the majority stays the injunction and thus allows the defendants to persist in committing the type of First Amendment violations that the lower courts identified.”
