Louisiana Judge Rules US Government Collusion With Social Media Censorship Is "Orwellian", Unconstitutional
In an order fittingly issued on Independence Day, a federal judge in Louisiana has forbidden multiple federal agencies and named officials from having any contact with social media companies with the intent to moderate content.
The preliminary injunction arises from a suit filed by the states of Missouri and Louisiana, along with individuals that include two leading critics of the Covid-19 lockdown regime - Harvard's Martin Kulldorff and Stanford's Jay Bhattacharya - and Jim Hoft, who owns the right-wing website Gateway Pundit.
“If the allegations made by plaintiffs are true, the present case arguably involves the most massive attack against free speech in United States’ history,” wrote US District Judge Terry A. Doughty. “The plaintiffs are likely to succeed on the merits in establishing that the government has used its power to silence the opposition.”
It is entirely appropriate that the judge in Missouri v. Biden issued an injunction against the Biden Administration's "Ministry of Truth" on July 4th.
The capacity of the American experiment to renew itself will never stop astonishing me.
Happy independence day! pic.twitter.com/NiyN7pJXTb
— Jay Bhattacharya (@DrJBhattacharya)
The dozens of people and agencies bound by the injunction include President Biden, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, the Food and Drug Administration, Centers for Disease Control, the Treasury Department, State Department, the US Election Assistance Commission, the FBI and entire Justice Department, and the Department of Health and Human Services.
While the case is dominated by Covid-19 censorship, it also encompasses the Justice Department's efforts to suppress reporting about Hunter Biden's "laptop from hell" in the run-up to the 2020 election. Doughty gave credence to that accusation.
The injunction represents a major validation of accusations that government officials have colluded with social media platforms to suppress speech that counters official narratives, with the restraints falling almost exclusively on the exposure of corruption.
"The evidence thus far depicts an almost dystopian scenario," wrote Doughty in a 155-page ruling. "During the COVID-19 pandemic, a period perhaps best characterized by widespread doubt and uncertainty, the United States Government seems to have assumed a role similar to an Orwellian 'Ministry of Truth'."
"The White House defendants made it very clear to social-media companies what they wanted suppressed and what they wanted amplified," wrote Doughty. "Faced with unrelenting pressure from the most powerful office in the world, the social-media companies apparently complied."
A long list of agencies and people are now barred from contacting social media platforms with “the purpose of urging, encouraging, pressuring, or inducing in any manner the removal, deletion, suppression, or reduction of content containing protected free speech.”
"If there is a bedrock principal underlying the First Amendment, it is that the government may not prohibit the expression of an idea simply because society finds the idea itself offensive or disagreeable," wrote Doughty.
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/judge-bars-biden-officials-agencies-contacting-social-media-companies
