Quote:In a unanimous ruling yesterday, the Fifth Circuit expanded bars on the Biden administration’s Big Brother censorship activities, blocking the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) from any speech-policing communication with private-sector media platforms.

 The unanimous ruling reinforces Doughty’s original findings that nearly every government agency cited by plaintiffs in Missouri v Biden engaged in unconstitutional viewpoint suppression (except for NIAID), and that pressure by officials at all of these agencies transformed the private social-media platforms into agents of government censorship:

Quote:The Plaintiffs allege that federal officials ran afoul of the First Amendment by coercing and significantly encouraging “social-media platforms to censor disfavored [speech],” including by “threats of adverse government action” like antitrust enforcement and legal reforms. We agree.
The government cannot abridge free speech. U.S. Const. amend. I. A private party, on the other hand, bears no such burden—it is “not ordinarily constrained by the First Amendment.” Manhattan Cmty. Access Corp. v. Halleck, 139 S. Ct. 1921, 1930 (2019). That changes, though, when a private party is coerced or significantly encouraged by the government to such a degree that its “choice”—which if made by the government would be unconstitutional, Norwood v. Harrison, 413 U.S. 455, 465 (1973)—“must in law be deemed to be that of the State.” Blum v. Yaretsky, 457 U.S. 991, 1004 (1982); Barnes v. Lehman, 861 F.2d 1383, 1385– 36 (5th Cir. 1988).9 This is known as the close nexus test.10

And this time, the court makes clear the “daylight” involved:

Quote:It is true that the officials have an interest in engaging with socialmedia companies, including on issues such as misinformation and election interference. But the government is not permitted to advance these interests to the extent that it engages in viewpoint suppression. Because “[i]njunctions protecting First Amendment freedoms are always in the public interest,” the equities weigh in Plaintiffs’ favor.

In other words, the government is free to enter the public square and offer its opinions on truth and error. But they cannot pressure these platforms into censoring speech, let alone directly order the silencing of Americans involved in political debate.
The ruling goes on to confirm their earlier ruling vacating all but section 6 of the original injunction while adding CISA to the agencies enjoined. This appears to be the Fifth Circuit’s attempt to remedy the CISA question, but also to clarify its earlier ruling when the Supreme Court takes up discussion of the government’s appeal. Jonathan Turley sees it as a “major victory for free speech” on its own merits:

Quote:Jen Easterly, who heads the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, extended her agency’s mandate over critical infrastructure to include “our cognitive infrastructure.” The resulting censorship efforts included combating “malinformation” – described as information “based on fact, but used out of context to mislead, harm, or manipulate.”
Easterly is now barred from taking any action to T“coerce or significantly encourage” tech companies to remove or reduce the spread of posts. The Supreme Court may now have an opportunity to weigh in after the Justice Department appealed the injunction.

Quote:The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission sued Elon Musk on Thursday in an effort to compel the billionaire to testify over his purchase of Twitter last year.

Attorneys representing the SEC alleged in a legal filing released in the Northern District of California that Musk failed to appear for a Sept. 15 testimony as required by a subpoena, which the attorneys said was served to the Tesla CEO in May 2023.