(PartiallyPolitics.com) – On Monday, the Supreme Court in a debate challenged the Biden administration’s attempts to have certain messages censored by Big Tech. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson in particular made some comments about the First Amendment that had raised some eyebrows.
The case has been brought forward by Louisiana and Missouri, two GOP-led states, that have claimed that government officials have been collaborating with Big Tech using combating misinformation as a front to censor speech on several different issues including the origins of the pandemic, the laptop of Hunter Biden and the effectiveness of face masks. In the lawsuit, the states all claim that this is a violation of the First Amendment.
After close to two hours of oral arguments, the justices had debated if a constitutional line had been crossed by these efforts. Justice Samuel Alito argued that the administration was treating social media companies, such as Facebook as a subordinate.
However, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson took a completely different approach arguing that the states had taken an approach that hamstrung the Biden administration during very crucial times. As she pointed out, the government had the right to take action to protect the country’s citizens through encouraging and even potentially pressuring the platforms to remove any harmful information.
Constitutional attorney John Shu has argued that Jackson, with her statement, appears to think that what the state is proposing would block the government from explaining facts to social media companies. He argued that at the core this case was about how persuasion and coercion were differentiated.
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