A landmark online censorship case that previously made its way up to the Supreme Court is concluding with an agreement to prevent certain government agencies from pressuring social media platforms into suppressing speech.
The Missouri v. Biden case, known for going to the Supreme Court as Murthy v. Missouri, is being settled with a 10-year consent decree preventing the surgeon general, the CDC, and the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) from coercing social media platforms into restricting speech.
“The Biden administration coerced social media companies to stifle free speech that they disapproved of. This @TheJusticeDept settlement is a key step in undoing those abuses of the First Amendment, especially against conservative media,” Attorney General Pam Bondi said in a statement.
In 2024, the Supreme Court found the Murthy v. Missouri plaintiffs lacked standing for a preliminary injunction from a lower court siding with the plaintiffs. The Supreme Court ruling sided with the Biden administration as it fought against the plaintiffs’s challenge to the ability of government agencies to pressure social media companies. It did not rule on the broader merits of the case. Missouri and Louisiana were plaintiffs in the case, as was a group of social media users that included current National Institutes of Health Director Dr. Jay Bhattacharya. He and Dr. Martin Kuldorff, a senior official at the Department of Health and Human Services, withdrew from the case when they joined the Trump administration.
After the Supreme Court’s ruling, the litigation continued at the lower court level. Discovery from the Missouri v. Biden litigation along with congressional investigations and the “Twitter files” documents demonstrated the extensive coordination between social media platforms, government agencies, and affiliated nonprofits to censor speech online. The suppression of the Hunter Biden laptop story and the lab leak theory of Covid-19 origins were two prime examples of viewpoint suppression online.
At the start of his term, President Trump signed an executive order instructing federal agencies not to take actions that would infringe upon people’s free-speech rights. The order also said the administration would take action to remedy prior instances of censorship. Secretary of State Marco Rubio and other Trump cabinet officials were quick to act on the president’s directive with their respective agencies.
“The United States government cannot abridge speech directly, nor by inducing intermediaries to do so at its bidding. As recognized by last year's Executive Order, that is exactly what happened, sometimes driven by a prior administration, sometimes driven by bureaucrats, but always unlawful,” said Zhonette Brown, senior litigation counsel at the New Civil Liberties Alliance, a right-leaning law firm that represented several of the plaintiffs.
The consent decree prevents the surgeon general, CDC, and CISA from threatening Facebook, Instagram, X, LinkedIn, and YouTube into removing or suppressing First Amendment-protected speech. Furthermore, it prevents government agencies from attempting to steer the platforms’s content moderation decisions.
Senator Eric Schmitt (R., Mo.), the former Missouri attorney general responsible for launching the case, celebrated the consent decree as a major victory against the “deep state” of federal agencies named in various lawsuits and investigations.
“This is the first real, operational restraint on the federal censorship machine. It locks in the First Amendment principle we fought for: modern technology doesn't erase your rights, and government labels don't strip speech of protection. The deep state just got checked,” Schmitt said.
“For every working Missouri family tired of being silenced by their own government: this victory is yours. The heartland fought back, and the heartland delivered.”
Online censorship became a significant issue for American conservatives in the first half of this decade because of viewpoint suppression on major platforms. Covid-19, gender ideology, and the Hunter Biden corruption scandal were issues conservatives regularly cited in arguing that social media platforms were censoring right-wing perspectives. Meta and YouTube have apologized for censoring conservative users and succumbing to pressure from the Biden administration. Both have implemented free-speech reforms meant to prevent similar actions from taking place in the future.
The Trump administration is now being accused of acting similarly to its predecessor in its efforts to pressure tech platforms into suppressing speech from activists opposed to Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s urban crackdowns.
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