Judge refuses to pause ban on US agency social-media contact
A federal judge in Louisiana denied a request by the U.S. government to delay an order he imposed last week banning federal agencies and officials from communicating with social media companies.
The Justice Department is expected to ask the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to intervene after U.S. District Court Judge Terry Doughty on Monday refused to pause his July 4 nationwide injunction. He also denied the government’s alternative request for a seven-day pause while it petitions the appeals court to step in.
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Doughty defended his order against the Justice Department’s argument that it is overly broad and unclear in defining what kind of communication with tech companies is no longer allowed. He wrote that the government isn’t entitled to a delay in enforcing his order since they were likely to lose on the merits of the case, and that the Justice Department failed to identify specific examples of government activity that would be hurt in the meantime.
Although the ruling involves numerous agencies, “it is not as broad as it appears,” the judge wrote in the order. “It only prohibits something the Defendants have no legal right to do — contacting social media companies for the purpose of urging, encouraging, pressuring, or inducing in any manner, the removal, deletion, suppression, or reduction of content containing protected free speech posted on social-media platforms. It also contains numerous exceptions,” the judge said.
A Justice Department spokesperson didn’t immediately return a request for comment.
The Biden administration wants to put the communications ban on hold while it challenges Doughty’s 155-page opinion concluding the government likely violated the First Amendment in its efforts to persuade tech companies to take steps to limit the spread of misinformation and fake accounts, especially during the pandemic.
In asking for a reprieve, government attorneys argued the judge’s order was too broad, unclear and would interfere with the ability of federal agencies to work with tech companies “on initiatives to prevent grave harm to the American people and our democratic processes.”
Doughty’s order bars an array of agencies and their employees from “urging, encouraging, pressuring, or inducing” social media companies to remove or restrict content covered by the First Amendment’s free speech protections.
