‘If the lower courts’ assessment of the voluminous record is correct, this is one of the most important free speech cases to reach this Court in years,’ says Alito.
Justice Samuel Alito delivered a blistering dissenting opinion in a recent 6-3 Supreme Court decision allowing the federal government to request social media companies to censor users.
While Justice Amy Coney Barrett argued in the court’s majority opinion the plaintiffs hadn’t established proper standing to seek an injunction against the defendants in Murthy v. Missouri, Justice Alito pointed out:
If the lower courts’ assessment of the voluminous record is correct, this is one of the most important free speech cases to reach this Court in years.
“Freedom of speech serves many valuable purposes, but its most important role is protection of speech that is essential to democratic self-government… and speech that advances humanity’s store of knowledge, thought, and expression in fields such as science, medicine, history, the social sciences, philosophy, and the arts…,” Justice Alito wrote in the introduction of his 33-page opinion, joined in the dissent by Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch.
Alito went on to note the case primarily dealt with censoring opinions and users during the Covid pandemic, and said while some “dangerous” speech may have been suppressed, undoubtedly valuable speech was also censored.
Alito highlighted previous rulings have established “government officials may not coerce private entities to suppress speech… and that is what happened in this case.”
“In sum, the officials wielded potent authority,” Alito concludes his argument. “Their communications with Facebook were virtual demands. And Facebook’s quavering responses to those demands show that it felt a strong need to yield. For these reasons, I would hold that [Plaintiff Jill] Hines is likely to prevail on her claim that the White House coerced Facebook into censoring her speech.”
Alito is himself currently at the center of a free speech dispute, with liberals demanding he recuse himself from pivotal cases involving former President Donald Trump after the SCOTUS justice was observed flying an upside-down American flag at his residence, as well as an “Appeal to Heaven” flag at his beach house.
Alito’s dissenting opinion begins on page 35 in the below document:
