Alito Slams Supreme Court Decision To Allow Censorship
Conservative Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito is calling out his colleagues for their “highly disturbing” decision to reverse a lower court’s injunction that blocked the White House and other federal officials from colluding with Big Tech companies to censor Americans.
Despite the fact that the censorship push is a clear violation of the First Amendment, six Supreme Court justices chose to stay the lower court’s injunction — prompting anger from the three conservative justices.
“This case concerns what two lower courts found to be a coordinated campaign by high-level federal officials to suppress the expression of disfavored views on important public issues,” Alito wrote in the dissent — joined by Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch.
He went on to explain that the injunction the court reversed had barred Biden administration officials from “either coercing social media companies to engage in such censorship or actively controlling those companies’ decisions about the content posted on their platforms.”
The lawsuit was filed by Louisiana Governor-elect Jeff Landry (R), who was serving as Louisiana’s Attorney General at the time of the filing, and Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-MO), who was serving as Missouri’s Attorney General at the time of the filing. Several private citizens also joined on to the lawsuit, including medical experts whose views about COVID were censored on social media.
The injunction was granted by a federal judge in Louisiana, with the court finding that “It is the purpose of the Free Speech Clause of the First Amendment to preserve an uninhibited marketplace of ideas in which truth will ultimately prevail, rather than to countenance monopolization of the market, whether it be by government itself or private licensee.”
The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals later affirmed the injunction, though it did modify it.
The Department of Justice (DOJ) demanded a stay of the injunction, while U.S. Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar requested that the Supreme Court review the merits of the case.
The high court appeared to agree with the Biden administration — voting 6-3 to stay the injunction and allow the Biden administration to continue violating the First Amendment while the court takes up the case.
Alito slammed the decision, pointing out that the court wouldn’t be able to review the case for some time — meaning that they were essentially allowing violations of the First Amendment to occur in the meantime.
“Today … a majority of the Court, … without any explanation, suspends the effect of that injunction until the Court completes its review of this case, an event that may not occur until late in the spring of next year,” he wrote. “Government censorship of private speech is antithetical to our democratic form of government, and therefore today’s decision is highly disturbing.”
“The injunction applies only when the Government crosses the line and begins to coerce or control others’ exercise of their free-speech rights. Does the Government think that the First Amendment allows Executive Branch officials to engage in such conduct?” Alito asked.
“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,” he continued.
“At this time in the history of our country, 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,” Alito added.
“That is most unfortunate,” he concluded.
