Oral arguments in both cases should be interesting. CSPAN will carry live audio of both arguments.
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These two cases are extremely important for the future of our Country. If the Court does its job correctly it will condemn the back door effort of state and federal government to coerce or otherwise partner with private corporations to do what the government is otherwise prohibited from doing under the First Amendment. Our government has become so morally and ethically bankrupt that it actually believes it is fine to connive with private corporations to violate its citizens’s First Amendment rights, so lets see how they defend this illegal activity before the Supreme Court today.
If SCOTUS rules for the government in Murthy then there will be no limit on the actions government agencies can take to coerce private companies to censor or promote speech according to the government preferred narrative.
The attorney for the government is misstating the issue at the heart of the matter. It’s not that government cannot speak (as he is framing the argument). It’s that government agencies cannot threaten social media companies as to which speech can be oppressed or promoted. Few justices seem to swallowing his argument thus far.
The liberal justices were piling on the attorney for the state and the conservative justices were mostly silent. Barrett seemed to agree that government should be able to silence social media posts that disagreed with the government’s position.