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You may or may not have read of this, but the United States District Court for the Western District of Louisiana just approved a formal Consent Decree in the case of Missouri v. Biden, between the State of Missouri and other plaintiffs and the Defendants, which binds the U.S. Surgeon General, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) from pressuring social media companies to silence Americans for a ten-year period. This Consent Decree is a major victory for First Amendment rights.
As Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt announced,
“We just won Missouri v. Biden. As Missouri’s Attorney General, I sued the Biden regime for brazenly colluding with Big Tech to silence Missouri families — censoring the truth about COVID, the Hunter Biden laptop, the open border, and the 2020 election. They tried to turn Facebook, X, YouTube, and the rest into their private speech police, labeling dissent “misinformation” while they pushed their narrative on the American people. Today, after years of unrelenting litigation, we deep state into a historic 10-year, court-enforceable Consent Decree. It directly binds the Surgeon General, the CDC, and CISA: no more threats of legal, regulatory, or economic punishment. No more coercion. No more unilateral direction or veto of platform decisions to remove, suppress, deplatform, or algorithmically bury protected speech.”
Importantly, though, this Consent Decree does not bind the FBI, the CIA, the Department of Justice, the War Department, or the FTC from pressuring social-media companies to stifle free speech. A wink and a nod between agency chiefs and these other agencies and departments could easily do the dirty and unconstitutional work of killing free speech. No paper trail, no smoking gun – just unrecorded words quietly exchanged between co-conspirators – and away they go again ….
As blogger Vinu Arumugham commented recently, “Sorry, this is all useless. Violating our constitutional rights is a crime. They did that with impunity. Why would they not violate this decree now? Until people are thrown in prison for their crimes, they will continue to repeat those crimes.”
I agree. But in the meantime, we should take this legal victory for what it is: A Big Win. |
