The person at Facebook said they presumed similar meetings the State Department had scheduled with other tech companies also were canceled, but that could not be confirmed immediately. Representatives for the State Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment. CISA declined to comment, referring questions to the Justice Department, which did not immediately respond. Representatives for Google, which owns YouTube, and other social media companies also did not immediately respond.

The cancellation of regular meetings between Facebook parent company Meta — the world’s largest social media firm — and U.S. government agencies shows the immediate impact of Tuesday’s order by U.S. District Judge Terry A. Doughty, a Trump appointee. The order is a win for the right in a broader battle over the role of social media companies in shaping online speech and information.

While the ruling won’t stop sites such as Facebook, Instagram, YouTube or TikTok from moderating online content, it stands to sideline federal government officials and agencies that had become key contributors to those efforts. In the past, meetings between the State Department and Facebook in particular have flagged suspected foreign influence operations for the companies to investigate.

Issued on the Fourth of July, the order found that the Biden administration probably violated the First Amendment in applying pressure to Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and other social media firms to restrict the viral spread of posts that stoked fears about coronavirus vaccines or fueled false claims related to U.S. elections.

Leading U.S. social media companies began coordinating regularly with the federal government in 2017, following revelations of a Russian campaign to sow discord among Americans during the 2016 presidential election campaign. Partnerships between Silicon Valley and Washington on what the tech companies call “content moderation” deepened and broadened during the pandemic, when platforms such as Twitter, Google’s YouTube, and Meta’s Facebook and Instagram became hotbeds for conspiracy theories about the virus and opposition to public health guidance.

The attorneys general of Missouri and Louisiana, along with a host of other plaintiffs, sued Biden and a bevy of government agencies and officials in 2022, alleging that they had cajoled and coerced the tech firms into removing or suppressing speech that is protected under the First Amendment. The Biden administration has argued that it did not violate the First Amendment, but rather used its bully pulpit to promote accurate information in the face of a public health crisis and foreign interference in U.S. elections.

On Tuesday, Doughty, who sought to block several Biden administration mandates during the pandemic, sided largely with the plaintiffs. He issued a preliminary injunction that prohibits several federal agencies and their employees from “meeting with social-media companies for the purpose of urging, encouraging, pressuring, or inducing in any manner the removal, deletion, suppression, or reduction of content containing protected free speech.”

Doughty’s decision left exceptions for the government to communicate with tech companies about certain categories of posts, including those involving criminal activity and foreign election interference.

A White House official said Tuesday that the Justice Department “is reviewing the court’s injunction and will evaluate its options in this case.”

The lawsuit also named as defendants several academics and civil society organizations that had contributed to partnerships between the online platforms and the government. Some of the academics who were named in the case declined to comment Wednesday. A representative for one said they were still trying to figure out which activities would have to be ended or modified.

Meta, Twitter and Google have declined to comment officially on the injunction. But the judge’s decision creates uncertainty about the future of content moderation at the companies ahead of the 2024 elections and raises legal questions about how they will communicate with officials at all levels of government about falsehoods related to voting.

The Biden administration is likely to appeal the injunction before voters head to the polls next year. But in the interim, the order is poised to have a chilling effect on the companies’ efforts to guard against misinformation as they work to sort out what types of partnerships are still allowed.

Tech companies are already taking significant steps to unwind programs to combat disinformation on their services. Under the helm of Elon Musk, Twitter has slashed its Trust and Safety teams and initiatives. Amid financial pressure and company layoffs, Meta has also made cuts to similar teams.

“There is so much wrong with this decision — not least of all that it will make us less secure going into the 2024 elections,” wrote Yoel Roth, the former head of Trust and Safety at Twitter, in a social media post. Roth said the most glaring problem with the decision is that it asserts the companies were “coerced” to remove posts simply because they met with government officials. “That’s just … not how any of this works,” he wrote.

Roth’s work at Twitter has come under the glare of Republican politicians. He has said during testimony before Congress that Twitter independently made decisions to remove content its staffers believed violated its rules. He said the U.S. government “took extraordinary efforts” to ensure it did not even hint at demanding the company remove posts.

Emails produced as evidence in the case also show tech companies pushing back against the Biden administration, at times telling government officials that the videos or posts they flagged did not run afoul of their policies against misinformation. The companies’ decisions frequently appeared to prompt frustration among Biden White House officials.

In April 2021, then-White House adviser Andy Slavitt sent an email to Facebook staff with the subject line, “Tucker Carlson anti-vaccine message,” noting that it was “number one on Facebook.” Later that day, a Facebook staffer responded, saying the video did not qualify for removal under its policies. The employee said the company was demoting the video and labeling it with a “pointer” to accurate information about the vaccine.

The company’s decision to leave the video up prompted backlash from Rob Flaherty, a another former White House official, who responded: “Not for nothing but last time we did this dance, it ended in an insurrection.”