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Supreme Court of the United States • 2024

Murthy v. Missouri

603 U.S. 43

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Takeaway

In short, this case turned on standing, not the First Amendment: the Court held that plaintiffs challenging Government-platform contacts must specifically show a likely future moderation injury caused by a particular official and likely cured by an injunction.

Background

During the COVID-19 pandemic and the 2020 election season, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and other platforms enforced policies against content they considered false or misleading. Federal officials also communicated extensively with the platforms. White House and Surgeon General officials pressed platforms to address COVID-19 and vaccine misinformation; the CDC flagged misinformation trends and posts; and the FBI and CISA communicated with platforms about election-related misinformation and foreign influence efforts.

Missouri and Louisiana, joined by five social-media users, sued federal agencies and officials. They alleged that the Government had pressured or significantly encouraged platforms to censor protected speech, including criticism of lockdowns, masks, vaccine mandates, vaccines, and election administration. They sought only prospective relief: an injunction against federal officials, not against the platforms themselves.

After extensive discovery, the District Court entered a broad preliminary injunction against the White House, the Surgeon General's Office, the CDC, the FBI, CISA, and numerous officials. It concluded that the Government had likely coerced or significantly encouraged platform moderation decisions. The Fifth Circuit largely agreed, though it narrowed the injunction to prohibit coercion or significant encouragement of social-media companies to suppress protected speech. The Supreme Court stayed that injunction, granted review, and reversed because no plaintiff established Article III standing to seek forward-looking injunctive relief.

Issues

Issue #1

Whether the plaintiffs had Article III standing to seek a preliminary injunction against federal officials for allegedly inducing future social-media censorship.

Holding

No. Neither the individual plaintiffs nor the States showed a likely, concrete, and imminent future injury that was fairly traceable to a particular defendant and likely redressable by an injunction against that defendant.

Reasoning

Article III requires a plaintiff to show a concrete and particularized injury that is actual or imminent, fairly traceable to the challenged conduct, and redressable by judicial relief. Because the plaintiffs sought a preliminary injunction, they had to make a clear showing that they were likely to establish each element of standing. Their requested relief was forward-looking, so past moderation decisions mattered only insofar as they demonstrated a real and immediate threat of repeated injury.

The claimed injuries depended on choices by platforms that were not parties to the suit. The plaintiffs therefore had to show a substantial risk that, in the near future, at least one platform would restrict at least one plaintiff's speech in response to the conduct of at least one named Government defendant. The Court rejected the Fifth Circuit's generalized approach, which treated all plaintiffs, defendants, and platforms as unified groups.

Standing is not dispensed in gross. A plaintiff had to connect a particular defendant's pressure on a particular platform, concerning a particular subject, to that platform's restriction of that plaintiff's speech on that subject. The record instead showed a complicated set of communications involving different agencies, platforms, topics, and times.

Issue #2

Whether the plaintiffs established that their past direct censorship injuries were fairly traceable to the challenged Government communications.

Holding

Largely no. The plaintiffs generally failed to link discrete content restrictions to communications by particular federal defendants, and the evidence showed that platforms had substantial independent reasons to moderate the relevant content.

Reasoning

The platforms had content-moderation policies targeting misinformation before the challenged federal communications began. They strengthened and applied those policies on their own, sometimes declined Government requests, and consulted outside experts. Thus, the mere overlap between Government concerns and platform moderation did not establish that every platform decision was caused, even partly, by Government coercion or encouragement.

Missouri and Louisiana identified only Facebook's action against a Louisiana legislator's post about children and COVID-19 vaccines. But they did not establish when Facebook acted against the post, making it impossible to show that the action followed or resulted from the CDC-related policy communication on which the States relied.

The three physician plaintiffs did not connect their platform restrictions to the White House or CDC. Their cited restrictions often involved Twitter or LinkedIn, while their evidence concerned Facebook communications; the timing, platform, and sometimes the subject matter did not align. Their allegations regarding suppression of the Great Barrington Declaration pointed instead to agencies no longer before the Court.

Jim Hoft did not show that election-related restrictions on his or his website's content were traceable to the FBI or CISA. Twitter's action involving a Hunter Biden-related post appeared to rest on its rule against sharing private intimate media without consent, not on an FBI-induced hacked-material policy. A CISA-related spreadsheet also did not show that CISA, rather than a private entity, flagged his content or that a platform suppressed it.

Jill Hines made the strongest showing because Facebook restricted her and her advocacy group's vaccine-related content while the White House and CDC were communicating with Facebook. But most connections remained tenuous: Facebook began limiting her content before nearly all relevant Government communications, and the cited Government requests often did not match Facebook's later action against her posts or groups. Even assuming one or two past restrictions could be traced to officials, that limited showing did not itself establish likely future injury.

Issue #3

Whether the plaintiffs established a substantial risk of future direct censorship injury that was traceable to the defendants and redressable by an injunction.

Holding

No. The record did not show an ongoing Government pressure campaign likely to cause future platform restrictions, and an injunction against the Government was unlikely to change platforms' independent moderation decisions.

Reasoning

Plaintiffs without a demonstrated connection between past moderation and Government conduct were especially poorly positioned to establish future injury. Hoft's theory required speculation that he would make future election posts fitting a misinformation category identified by the FBI, that the FBI would pressure a platform, and that the platform would restrict his content because of that pressure rather than its own policies. CISA had also stopped its switchboarding operation and represented that it would not resume it for the 2024 election.

The White House's and Surgeon General's intense COVID-19-related communications with platforms occurred primarily in 2021 and had substantially diminished by 2022, before Hines joined the suit. Later contacts largely involved requests for information, such as Facebook's reports on popular vaccine-related posts, rather than directives or threats. The CDC had stopped holding platform meetings in March 2022, and its subsequent contacts were sporadic and ended by summer 2022.

The plaintiffs could not create standing by self-censoring in response to fears of future moderation. Their self-censorship was not fairly traceable to the defendants where platforms had independently moderated similar content before the challenged Government conduct began.

The theory that platforms continued to enforce policies originally adopted under Government pressure failed on redressability. Without evidence of continuing pressure, an injunction against federal defendants would not prevent platforms from independently keeping or enforcing those policies. Facebook's restrictions on Hines's vaccine-related content in 2023, even as the federal pandemic response wound down, reinforced that an injunction was unlikely to alter platform decisions.

Issue #4

Whether the individual plaintiffs and States had standing based on a First Amendment right to receive or listen to other users' social-media speech.

Holding

No. The asserted interest in hearing unrestricted social-media speech was too generalized and lacked a concrete, particularized connection to a specific speaker or identifiable injury.

Reasoning

The Court has recognized a First Amendment interest in receiving information and ideas, but its precedents involve a concrete connection between the listener and the speaker or information—for example, professors seeking to hear an invited speaker or consumers seeking price information about prescription drugs. A broad right for any social-media user to challenge another person's alleged censorship would exceed those precedents.

The individual plaintiffs asserted that unfiltered social-media speech was important to their work as scientists, commentators, and activists. But they identified no specific moderation decision involving another speaker that caused them identifiable harm. Their claimed injury was therefore not sufficiently concrete and particularized.

The States similarly failed to identify particular citizens, speakers, or subjects from whom they were unable to receive information. Their attempt to invoke a sovereign interest in listening to citizens could not support standing on behalf of those citizens, because States may not sue the Federal Government as parens patriae for injuries to their residents.

Dissents

Justice Alito

Reasoning

Justice Alito, joined by Justices Thomas and Gorsuch, argued that Jill Hines had standing and that the Court therefore had a duty to decide the First Amendment question. In his view, the record documented a far-reaching federal campaign to pressure platforms, especially Facebook, to suppress disfavored COVID-19 views. He emphasized that valuable public debate about a pandemic can be lost when officials seek to control the marketplace of ideas, even if some of the disputed speech is false or harmful.

Focusing on White House and Surgeon General communications with Facebook, Justice Alito described repeated demands for more aggressive moderation, criticism that Facebook was failing to "play ball," references to the January 6 attack, and suggestions that the Administration was considering its options. He read public comments about antitrust enforcement, Section 230, and platforms allegedly "killing people" as implicit threats of serious regulatory retaliation. Because major platforms depend on federal legal protections and are vulnerable to antitrust enforcement and other regulation, such statements from senior officials carried unusual coercive force.

Justice Alito viewed Facebook's apologetic and accommodating responses as powerful evidence that it understood the communications as coercive rather than merely persuasive. Facebook repeatedly promised to do more, sought to restore a positive relationship with the White House, and changed content policies after official pressure. The fact that Facebook sometimes resisted particular requests did not, in his view, negate the larger pattern of pressure and compliance.

He concluded that Hines had a real and immediate threat of future injury when she sued because Facebook was still restricting her vaccine-related speech and the policy changes allegedly induced by the Government remained in effect. Traceability did not require an ironclad chain linking each individual Government communication to each particular adverse action; it was enough that officials predictably induced policy changes that affected Hines. Likewise, an injunction would likely reduce her risk of future harm even if it could not guarantee that Facebook would cease all independent moderation.

On the merits, Justice Alito would have held that Hines was likely to prove unconstitutional coercion under Bantam Books and National Rifle Association v. Vullo. The relevant officials possessed formidable authority, their communications amounted to virtual demands coupled with thinly veiled threats, and Facebook's responses showed that it felt compelled to comply. He warned that the majority's standing ruling leaves a sophisticated coercive censorship campaign unchecked and may teach future officials how to evade judicial review.