US Supreme Court rules White House can press social media companies to remove misinformation

​​​​​​​By Darren Lyn

HOUSTON, United States (AA) - The US Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that the White House can continue to urge social media companies to remove content the government views as misinformation, according to media outlets.

In a 6 - 3 vote, the nation's highest court maintained that federal agencies such as the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security could continue to flag social media posts by users on Facebook and X that it believes may be the work of foreign agents seeking to disrupt the 2024 presidential race.

The case was established in 2022 by Republican officials in Louisiana and Missouri, as well as five social media users, who sued over the common White House practice.

Since the coronavirus pandemic and the 2020 presidential election, the Biden administration has engaged with social media platforms to take down posts featuring disinformation about vaccines, pandemic-related speculation and content about former President Donald Trump’s loss in the election being rigged. The White House argued that many of the posts violated the platforms’ stated policies.

The plaintiffs argued that the White House did far more than "persuade" social media companies to take down a few deceptive items. Instead, they said, the Biden administration engaged in an informal, backdoor campaign of coercion to silence voices with which it disagreed.

The Supreme Court disagreed with that argument.

"To establish standing, the plaintiffs must demonstrate a substantial risk that, in the near future, they will suffer an injury that is traceable to a government defendant and redressable by the injunction they seek," Justice Amy Coney Barrett wrote in her opinion. "Because no plaintiff has carried that burden, none has standing to seek a preliminary injunction."

The ruling was seen by many political experts as a technical victory for Biden with the Nov. 5 presidential election and rematch against Trump quickly approaching.

Samuel Alito was one of the three dissenting justices who said the case was "one of the most important free speech cases to reach this Court in years" and believed that the plaintiffs had brought enough evidence to establish standing.

Alito called the conduct of officials being sued in the case “unconstitutional,” “coercive” and “dangerous.”

"The Court, however, shirks that duty and thus permits the successful campaign of coercion in this case to stand as an attractive model for future officials who want to control what the people say, hear, and think," Alito wrote. "That is regrettable."