A federal judge Monday denied the Biden Justice Department’s request for a stay of a ruling that puts extraordinary limits on government communications with social media companies, rejecting the administration’s argument that the sweeping order could chill law enforcement activity to protect national security interests.
U.S. District Judge Terry A. Doughty said that his order creates exceptions for communications related to criminal activity, national security threats, cyberattacks and foreign attempts to interfere in elections, and that the Biden administration did not cite any specific examples of communications included under the injunction “that would provide grave harm to the American people or our democratic processes.”
“Although this Preliminary Injunction involves numerous agencies, it is not as broad as it appears,” Doughty, a Trump-appointed judge, wrote in his denial of the stay. “It only prohibits something the Defendants have no legal right to do — contacting 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 posted on social-media platforms.”
Civil rights groups, academics and tech industry officials say the order — which places restrictions on more than a dozen health and law enforcement agencies and officials across the federal government — could undermine efforts to address disinformation on social media. They warn that the judge’s injunction could unravel efforts to protect U.S. elections, which were developed after revelations of Russian interference in the 2016 election.
Doughty also said the Republican state attorneys general who brought the lawsuit are likely to prove that a variety of government agencies and government officials “coerced, significantly encouraged, and/or jointly participated” in suppressing social media posts that included anti-vaccination views and questioned the results of the 2020 elections.