Mary Holland, Pres/Gen Counsel for Children’s Health defense, giving an excellent recap of the Free Speech/1A/SCOTUS hearing, of earlier, today….on Warroom.
I’m listening.👂
Trying not to get discouraged.
This morning from Turley......
Jonathan Turley
@JonathanTurley
The oral arguments in Murthy v. Missouri are about to begin on the censorship of social media by the government. It could prove one of the most important free speech cases in the history of the Court...
...Brian Fletcher is first up for the Biden Administration to seek defend the role of the government in working to censor social media. He is starting by trying to bar review by attacking standing to sue...
...Sotomayor had a great question to the government on why an injunction to prevent it from coercing companies or speakers is a material injury to the government...
...Fletcher insists that these are merely “bully pulpit exhortations” by President Biden and others rather than coercion. It is, in the Administration’s view, persuasive not coercive...
...Justice Alito noted that, if any of the parties have standing, they must rule on the merits. He noted one of the parties had a Facebook account suspended at the time of the filing. Fletcher admits it is an injury, but said it was not traceable to the government...
...Alito then delivered a haymaker and said two lower courts found it was traceable and the Biden Administration failed to properly challenge that point. Alito has a good point that the Court ordinarily will follow the record on such findings...
...Fletcher is really struggling here on the standard and Justice Gorsuch further nailed him down further redressability and traceability...
...Another Alito haymaker: “Wow I cannot imagine federal officials taking that approach to the print media. If you did that to them, what do you think the reaction would be...Would you do that the New York Times . . . “
...Alito pointed over to the print media and asked what would happen if they tried to take this approach to print media. Fletcher did not answer the question and fell back to how back the pandemic was...
...Alito did not buy it and noted that the print media was also part of the pandemic effort. Fletcher admitted that “I had the same reaction that these messages were unusual.” He also added that they show “anger” by the government...
...Justice Jackson just nudged Fletcher back from his concession that, if there was coercion, there might be a first amendment violation. Jackson suggested that some coercion might be allowed in “a once in a lifetime pandemic.” That question is chilling for free speech advocates
...Justice Kagan just voiced a possible avenue to dismiss on simply finding no future harm was shown...
...Justice Gorsuch just raised whether the coercion is greater with a concentrated industry like social media. It makes coordination easier and Gorsuch was asking if that is a relevant concern...
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