Louisiana and Missouri have secured a federal consent decree with the Trump administration, barring the federal government from using coercion tactics to force social media companies into censoring speech.
Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill announced the decree March 24.
“Shadow bans, throttling and blocking information such as the Hunter Biden laptop were a common occurrence,” Murrill said in a press release. “One of the darkest moments in the history of the First Amendment is over.
“I’d like to thank President Trump and his administration for defending the Constitution and ending this assault on free speech.”
In 2022, Louisiana and Missouri filed a federal lawsuit against the Biden administration for pressuring major social media companies to censor speech and content on COVID-19, elections and more.
Murrill compared the situation to the George Orwell novel “1984,” saying the book was meant to serve as a warning against tyranny.
“He never intended it to be used as a how-to guide by the federal government,” Murrill’s press release stated. “Yet our case uncovered over 20,000 pages of documents highlighting an extensive censorship campaign stemming directly from the President of the United States and his administration.”
A majority of the United States Supreme Court found a lack of standing to sue. But as Supreme Court Justices Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch as well as Western District of Louisiana Chief U.S. District Judge Terry Doughty, said, “This case involves ‘a far-reaching and widespread censorship campaign’ conducted by high-ranking federal officials against Americans who expressed certain disfavored views about COVID–19 on social media.” That was “blatantly unconstitutional,” they wrote.
Murrill said the consent decree ends this litigation and gives Louisiana the power to enforce this decree against the federal government.
“The Surgeon General, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) (“Enjoined Defendants”), and their employees and agents, shall take no actions, formal or informal, directly or indirectly — except as authorized by the Constitution, statute, judicial order, or regulation — to threaten Social-Media Companies with some form of punishment (i.e., an adverse legal, regulatory, or economic government sanction) unless they remove, delete, suppress, or reduce, including through altering their algorithms, posted social-media content containing protected free speech,” the decree states. “Nor shall Enjoined Defendants unilaterally direct or veto social media content moderation decisions of Social Media Companies.”