Court weighs curbs on Biden administration’s contacts with social media firms By Reuters

<p> <br />
</p>
<div>
<div>
<img decoding="async" alt="Court weighs curbs on Biden administration's contacts with social media firms" id="carouselImage" src="https://i-invdn-com.investing.com/trkd-images/LYNXMPEJ790F1_L.jpg" style="visibility:hidden" /><br />
<span>© Reuters. FILE PHOTO: U.S. President Joe Biden delivers remarks on the economy at Arcosa, a wind tower manufacturing facility in Belen, New Mexico, U.S. August 9, 2023. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst</span><br />
<i class="imgGrad"/>
</div>
<p>By Brendan Pierson</p>
<p>(Reuters) -A lawyer for the Biden administration on Thursday urged a federal appeals court to lift a Louisiana judge’s order limiting the administration’s ability to ask social media companies to limit the spread of information it deems harmful or misleading.</p>
<p>Daniel Tenny, a lawyer with the U.S. Department of Justice, told a three-judge panel of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans that Louisiana and Missouri, which sued the administration claiming that conservative speech had been censored on social media platforms, were not actually harmed by any of the government’s actions.</p>
<p>“These are things that they have no standing to challenge, that don’t cause them irreparable injury,” he said. Tenny said that government officials had not coerced social media companies to suppress any information, and that the court-imposed limits could prevent them from alerting social media companies to dangerous false information in a natural disaster, for example.</p>
<p>The states are expected to make their argument later in the afternoon.</p>
<p>U.S. District Judge Terry Doughty, in his July 4 ruling, agreed with the states’ Republican attorneys general who filed the lawsuit, saying government officials had illegally pushed social media companies to censor disfavored viewpoints.</p>
<p>Doughty, an appointee of former Republican President Donald Trump, said those “Orwellian” efforts began under Trump’s administration in 2019 with officials asking social media companies such as Meta Platform’s Facebook (NASDAQ:), Alphabet (NASDAQ:) Inc-owned YouTube and Twitter, now known as X Corp, to limit the spread of posts they considered to be misinformation.</p>
<p>Doughty said those actions led to the suppression of posts opposing vaccines, mask requirements and government-ordered lockdowns to combat COVID-19’s spread and opposition to the validity of the 2020 election, which Biden won over Trump.</p>
<p>The judge, whose courthouse in Monroe has become a favored venue for Republican challenges to Biden’s policies, said the “widespread censorship campaign” violated the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment’s free speech guarantees.</p>
<p>He barred government agencies, including the Department of Health and Human Services and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, from talking to social media companies to seek the removal or suppression of content containing protected free speech, with narrow exceptions.</p>
<p>The Biden administration quickly appealed, and the 5th Circuit temporarily put the judge’s ruling on hold while it considers the case.</p>
<p>The three judges on the panel, U.S. Circuit Judges Edith Brown Clement, Jennifer Walker Elrod and Don Willett, were all appointed by Republican presidents.</p>
<p>The case has drawn numerous friend-of-the-court briefs, which have broken down largely along partisan lines. Republican state attorneys general and members of Congress have weighed in to support the two states, while Democratic-led states are backing the administration.</p>
</div>
<p><br />
<br /><a href="https://www.investing.com/news/stock-market-news/court-to-weigh-curbs-on-biden-administrations-contacts-with-social-media-firms-3150889">Source link </a></p><p>The post <a href="https://forextraderhub.com/court-weighs-curbs-on-biden-administrations-contacts-with-social-media-firms-by-reuters.html">Court weighs curbs on Biden administration’s contacts with social media firms By Reuters</a> first appeared on <a href="https://forextraderhub.com">Forex Trader Hub</a>.</p>