No. of Recommendations: 2
5th Circuit finds Biden White House, CDC likely violated First Amendment
The three judge panel found that contacts with tech companies by officials from the White House, the surgeon general's office, the CDC and the FBI likely amounted to coercion
(However, the ruling is better than the injunction!)
The decision was likely to be seen as victory for conservatives who've long argued that social media platforms' content moderation efforts restrict their free speech rights. But some advocates also said the ruling was an improvement over the temporary injunction U.S. District Court Terry A. Doughty issued July 4...
Doughty's decision had affected a wide range of government departments and agencies, and imposed 10 specific prohibitions on government officials. The appeals court threw out nine of those and modified the 10th to limit it to efforts to 'coerce or significantly encourage social-media companies to remove, delete, suppress, or reduce, including through altering their algorithms, posted social-media content containing protected free speech.'
The 5th Circuit panel also limited the government institutions affected by its ruling to the White House, the surgeon general's office, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the FBI. It removed restrictions Doughty had imposed on the departments of State, Homeland Security and Health and Human Services and on agencies including the U.S. Census Bureau, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. The 5th Circuit found that those agencies had not coerced the social media companies to moderate their sites...
(However) 'We find, like the district court, that the officials' communications ' reading them in 'context, not in isolation' ' were on-the-whole intimidating,' the judges wrote.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/09/... 