Alito rails against White House in social media case dissent

Justice Samuel Alito railed against the White House in a dissenting Supreme Court opinion Wednesday, accusing the Biden administration of leading a “campaign to coerce Facebook” when it attempted to moderate misinformation on the COVID-19 pandemic on social media.

Joined by fellow conservative Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch, Alito dissented from his six colleagues in the majority who tossed lawsuits challenging the communications, finding the plaintiffs had no legal standing. 

The majority opinion, authored by conservative Justice Amy Coney Barrett, avoided addressing the merits of the free speech issue. Alito, however, said it “shirks” the court’s duty. 

“For months, high-ranking Government officials placed unrelenting pressure on Facebook to suppress Americans’ free speech,” Alito wrote. “Because the Court unjustifiably refuses to address this serious threat to the First Amendment, I respectfully dissent.” 

As Barrett read her opinion, Alito mainly looked down at a set of papers in front of him, with his head sometimes leaning on his hand. He did not read his dissent aloud from the bench. 

Like Alito, Thomas also looked down for the greater portion of the opinion reading and leaned his head on his hand at times. About halfway through Barrett’s reading, Thomas could be seen putting back on his glasses, reading papers in his hand and occasionally looking up and out into the courtroom. 

Gorsuch was absent from the bench Wednesday. 

The suit began when Republican state attorneys general and a group of private plaintiffs sued various agencies and officials in the Biden administration, arguing their urgings for social media platforms to take down content related to COVID-19, the 2020 election and other hot-button topics amounted to unconstitutional censorship. 

“I assume that a fair portion of what social media users had to say about COVID-19 and the pandemic was of little lasting value,” Alito wrote in his dissent. “Some was undoubtedly untrue or misleading, and some may have been downright dangerous. But we now know that valuable speech was also suppressed.” 

The Biden administration contended it was merely encouraging the platforms to moderate the content, so the communications didn’t cross the line into outright unconstitutional coercion.  

Alito rejected that view in his dissent, insisting White House officials “browbeat” Facebook into deleting posts, and the platform’s response “resembled that of a subservient entity determined to stay in the good graces of a powerful taskmaster.”

“If the lower courts’ assessment of the voluminous record is correct, this is one of the most important free speech cases to reach this Court in years,” Alito wrote.

The courtroom audience was moderately filled, with most looking straight ahead at the justices. 

The case was one of two decisions the Supreme Court handed down Wednesday — notably, neither one was a decision on former President Trump’s high-profile immunity claim. Michael Dreeben, a lawyer for special counsel Jack Smith’s team who argued the case, was present in the court audience, sitting in the second row of chairs.

It remains unclear if the court will finish its work by its self-imposed deadline of the last Friday in June. The justices have yet to hand down opinions in 12 argued cases this term, though additional opinions are expected Thursday and Friday morning.