US settles social media censorship case, bars agencies from threatening penalties

By Mike Scarcella

WASHINGTON, March 24 (Reuters) - ‌The Trump administration ​has ​agreed to a settlement that will bar three federal agencies from pressuring social media companies to remove or suppress speech, ending a high-profile ‌lawsuit that reached the U.S. Supreme Court when Trump's predecessor Joe ⁠Biden was president.

The settlement, filed on Tuesday in a federal court in Louisiana, resolves a lawsuit ‌brought by Missouri, Louisiana and ‌several individual plaintiffs who alleged that the Democratic Biden administration unlawfully coerced major social media platforms into censoring posts about topics including COVID-19 and the 2020 ​presidential election.

Under the agreement, the Surgeon General's office, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency are prohibited for ⁠10 years from threatening social media companies with legal, regulatory or economic punishment to get them to take down ​protected speech.

The White House had no immediate comment.

John Vecchione, a lawyer for some of the plaintiffs in the case, said in ​a statement that "freedom of speech has been powerfully ‌preserved by our clients, past and present, who initiated this suit.”

U.S. President Donald Trump, a Republican, issued an executive order in ⁠January that said the federal government under Biden “infringed on the constitutionally protected speech rights of American citizens across the United States in a manner that advanced the government’s preferred narrative ⁠about significant matters of public debate.”

Meta's Facebook, Google’s YouTube and X, which were not defendants in the ​lawsuit, did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The settlement comes nearly two years after the U.S. Supreme Court rejected a lower court ruling in the case that would have imposed ‌limits on the way the Biden administration communicated with social media platforms.

The Supreme Court voted 6-3 to reverse a lower ‌court finding that federal officials had likely violated free speech protections.

The proposed settlement does not ⁠prevent government officials from publicly ‌saying that social media posts ​are wrong or inaccurate, but only from making such statements with threats of punishment.

(Reporting by Mike Scarcella; Editing by David Bario and ‌Cynthia Osterman)

---

Serious News for Serious Traders! Try StreetInsider.com Premium Free!

---

You May Also Be Interested In

• Meta jury finds company misled New Mexico residents
• Russia says it hit cargo vessels bound for Ukraine, telecoms infrastructure in Kyiv
• Trump's AI meeting with tech CEOs to focus on finding balance, US House speaker says