Biden-era Social Media Censorship Policy Halted Following Settlement with Red States

Republican states have secured a landmark settlement in the social media censorship lawsuit against the Biden administration, imposing a 10-year ban on federal agencies pressuring platforms to remove content. Louisiana and Missouri attorneys general are hailing this as a historic First Amendment victory that sets crucial precedents for free speech protection.

The consent decree prohibits the Office of the Surgeon General, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency from coercing social media companies to suppress constitutionally protected speech. These agencies are now barred from threatening platforms or dictating their content moderation decisions.

“This is the first real, operational restraint on the federal censorship machine,” said Senator Eric Schmitt, who initiated the lawsuit as Missouri’s attorney general. “The deep state just got checked.”

Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill described the agreement’s significance in stark terms: “It was Orwellian in nature from the beginning. It still is, and I’m grateful that the government is acknowledging that it shouldn’t have been doing it.”

The high-profile lawsuit, filed in 2022, alleged that both Biden administration officials and some officials during the Trump administration improperly pressured companies like YouTube, Twitter (now X), and Facebook (now Meta) to censor conservative viewpoints on topics including COVID-19, election security, and Hunter Biden’s laptop.

The controversy gained significant momentum in 2020 when Twitter blocked and Facebook suppressed the New York Post’s report about the Biden family’s Ukraine connections based on Hunter Biden’s laptop. Discovery in the lawsuit and subsequent congressional investigations revealed that FBI officials had warned social media companies of a possible Russian “hack and leak” operation just before the story broke, influencing their decisions to restrict it.

Former President Donald Trump criticized these actions at the time as “out of control” and designed to undermine his election chances, calling social media platforms “a third arm, maybe a first arm, of the DNC.”

Judge Terry Doughty initially issued an injunction against the Biden administration in 2023, describing the government’s actions as creating “an almost dystopian scenario” reminiscent of an Orwellian “Ministry of Truth.” Evidence showed Biden administration officials aggressively demanding that platforms remove content they deemed misinformation, particularly about vaccines.

Communications revealed during the case showed White House officials telling Facebook they were “considering our options on what to do” and warning Twitter to take down content “ASAP” and “immediately.”

While the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit narrowed Doughty’s injunction and the Supreme Court ultimately vacated it on procedural grounds without addressing the merits of the case, this week’s settlement represents a significant outcome for the plaintiffs.

The agreement does permit government officials to continue communicating with social media companies, including flagging content or expressing disagreement, as long as communications don’t involve threats of regulatory or legal consequences. The federal government did not admit wrongdoing in the settlement, which preserves authorities’ ability to address criminal activity or national security threats on the platforms.

Missouri Attorney General Catherine Hanaway celebrated the decree, stating that her state “will NOT allow politicians to police speech.”

John Vecchione of the New Civil Liberties Alliance, which represented individual plaintiffs alongside the states, emphasized the journey to this result: “This case began with a suspicion, that blossomed into fact, that led to Congressional hearings and an Executive Order that government censorship of Americans’ social media posts should end.”

The settlement marks a significant development in the ongoing national debate over the boundaries between government influence, content moderation, and free speech rights in the digital age.