WASHINGTON, D.C. (LifeSiteNews) — The U.S. State Department under President Joe Biden has suspended its monthly meetings with social media companies following a federal court ruling against the federal government coordinating with Big Tech on censorship actions, in an early sign of the ruling’s ramifications for free speech.
On Tuesday, U.S. District Court for the Western District of Louisiana Judge Terry Doughty issued a temporary injunction against Biden, Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, and various cabinet secretaries and other federal officials from communicating with tech companies for the purpose of encouraging the suppression of specific user content on their platforms.
The next day, the Washington Post reported that the State Department has canceled its regular meeting with Facebook to discuss “preparations” for the 2024 elections. All future meetings with the social network are “canceled pending further guidance,” according to an unnamed official who added that he or she is “waiting to see” if the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency meeting gets canceled as well.
“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,” the Post writes. Various requests for comment to government officials and representatives of other tech companies were not returned.
The case was spearheaded by Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry and then-Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt, who say that they have documents indicating that “dozens of federal officials across at least 11 federal agencies,” including DHS and the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services (HHS), were involved in a “massive, sprawling federal ‘Censorship Enterprise’” with the “intent and effect of pressuring social-media platforms to censor and suppress private speech that federal officials disfavor.”
In July 2021, LifeSiteNews reported on Biden declaring that Facebook was “killing people” by not censoring more COVID “misinformation” and former White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki acknowledging that the administration had been “flagging problematic posts for Facebook that spread disinformation.”
In another case currently pending before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, the New Civil Liberties Alliance (NCLA) is representing Mark Changizi, Michael Singer, and Daniel Kotzin, who were suspended over tweets at odds with what at the time was the establishment view of COVID-19. They contend that Twitter was not merely exercising discretion over the use of its platform but rather acting in response to calls by government officials to quash dissenting COVID views, and particularly threats of new federal regulations if platforms did not take action on their own.