Rejoice and Be Glad

This is the best news I have heard in a long, long time! On Tuesday July 4, Judge Terry Doughty of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Louisiana granted plaintiffs’ motion for a preliminary injunction, barring various Biden administration officials from communicating with social media companies for the purpose of suppressing free speech. In granting the plaintiffs’ motion for a preliminary injunction, Judge Doughty stated “a state may not induce, encourage, or promote private persons to accomplish what it is constitutionally forbidden to accomplish. Additionally, when the government has so involved itself in the private party’s conduct, it cannot claim the conduct occurred as a result of private choice, even if the private party would have acted independently. Further, oral, or written statements made by public officials could give rise to a valid First Amendment claim where the comments of a governmental official can reasonably be interpreted as intimating that some form of punishment or adverse regulatory action will follow the failure to accede to the official’s request.”

Judge Doughty concluded that “The Plaintiffs are likely to succeed on the merits in establishing that the Government has used its power to silence the opposition. Opposition to COVID-19 vaccines; opposition to COVID-19 masking and lockdowns; opposition to the lab-leak theory of COVID-19; opposition to the validity of the 2020 election; opposition to President Biden’s policies; statements that the Hunter Biden laptop story was true; and opposition to policies of the government officials in power. All were suppressed. It is quite telling that each example or category of suppressed speech was conservative in nature. This targeted suppression of conservative ideas is a perfect example of viewpoint discrimination of political speech. American citizens have the right to engage in free debate about the significant issues affecting the country.”

The Judge’s ruling is a very big deal, for the government is now enjoined from speaking with social media representatives for “the purpose of urging, encouraging, pressuring, or inducing in any manner the removal, deletion, suppression, or reduction of content containing protected free speech.” The ruling prohibits the Department of Justice, the State Department, the Department of Health and Human Services, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, as well as individual officials like Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas, Secretary of Health and Human Services Xavier Becerra, United States Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, and Jen Easterly, who leads the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, from engaging in such conduct.

Of course, the Biden Administration is appealing the Judge’s ruling. We are appalled by the President’s reaction. Judge Doughty called the government sponsored censorship “the most massive attack against free speech in United States history.” Where’s the outrage? Why is there only silence from the ACLU and traditional liberals who, in the past, could always be counted on to protect the civil liberties of all Americans? Unfortunately, there are now only a few traditional liberals who have the courage to speak out. Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. has condemned the censorship and criticized the “mainstream media” for serving as “propagandists for the powerful.” Widely respected constitutional expert, Professor Jonathan Turley, stated that the “evidence overwhelmingly shows systematic violation of the First Amendment by the Biden administration,” and he notes that “every authoritarian government in history has justified censoring citizens because their views are harmful or false.”

President Biden often speaks against former President Trump and MAGA Republicans as representing a “threat to democracy.” I am not aware that the former President’s Administration worked hand-in-hand with social media to “silence the opposition” by censoring liberal thought. The next time President Biden worries about the “threat to democracy", he ought to first look at himself in the mirror.