Facts
- In early 2020, major social-media companies (including Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube) began applying their longstanding content-moderation policies to users posting false or misleading information about the COVID-19 pandemic and the 2020 presidential election.
- Federal officials and agencies communicated with these companies about online misinformation and election integrity concerns.
- Regarding COVID-19, the White House, the Surgeon General, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention communicated with platforms and, primarily in 2021, urged stronger moderation of certain content and asked for greater transparency about enforcement.
- Communications about COVID-19 decreased in 2022 as the pandemic waned.
- Regarding elections, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency notified platforms about posts containing false election information and warned of foreign-influence operations.
- Missouri, Louisiana, and five social-media users sued numerous federal agencies and officials, alleging the government violated the First Amendment by coercing or significantly encouraging platforms to suppress protected speech.
- The individual users alleged that government pressure contributed to moderation actions affecting their posts and accounts and also interfered with their ability to read others’ content.
- The U.S. District Court for the Western District of Louisiana entered a preliminary injunction barring federal officials from encouraging or pressuring platforms to remove, reduce, or suppress protected speech.
- The Fifth Circuit narrowed the injunction to focus on government “coercion” or “significant encouragement,” but otherwise allowed injunctive relief to proceed.
- The Supreme Court granted certiorari to review whether the plaintiffs had standing to obtain the preliminary injunction.
Issues
- Whether Missouri, Louisiana, and the individual social-media users had Article III standing to seek forward-looking injunctive relief limiting federal officials’ communications with social-media platforms about content moderation.
- If standing existed, whether the challenged government communications could be treated as coercion or significant encouragement that rendered platforms’ moderation decisions attributable to the government for First Amendment purposes.
Decision
- The Supreme Court (Barrett, J.) reversed the Fifth Circuit and remanded, holding 6–3 that none of the plaintiffs had Article III standing to seek the preliminary injunction.
- To obtain prospective relief, plaintiffs had to show a substantial risk of near-future injury that was fairly traceable to at least one government defendant and likely to be redressed by the requested injunction.
- The Court found the individual users did not establish traceability because the record did not non-speculatively connect specific content-moderation actions affecting them to coercive or significantly encouraging conduct by the specific government defendants they sued, given the platforms’ independent policies and decisionmaking.
- The Court also found redressability lacking because, even assuming some past moderation may have been influenced by government communications, plaintiffs did not show that an injunction against these federal defendants would likely prevent platforms from taking similar moderation actions in the future for their own reasons.
- The Court rejected the States’ standing theories because the alleged injuries were largely derivative of others’ speech and, in any event, failed on traceability and redressability for the same reasons that defeated the users’ claims.
- Because standing was absent, the Court did not decide the First Amendment merits, including whether any government conduct amounted to coercion or significant encouragement or whether the injunction’s terms were appropriate.
Legal Principles
- Article III standing requires (1) a concrete and particularized injury in fact, (2) a causal connection showing the injury is fairly traceable to the defendant’s challenged conduct, and (3) a likelihood that the injury will be redressed by the requested relief.
- A plaintiff seeking an injunction must show a substantial risk of future harm in the near term; past injury alone is not enough.
- When the alleged injury depends on decisions by independent third parties (such as private social-media platforms), traceability and redressability require more than generalized allegations; plaintiffs must connect their injury to the challenged conduct of specific defendants, not simply to a broad course of government-platform interactions.
- Redressability is not satisfied where the requested injunction would still leave third parties free to take the same challenged actions for independent reasons.
- States generally may not sue the federal government as parens patriae to vindicate their citizens’ rights; and “special solicitude” for States does not remove the need to prove injury, traceability, and redressability.
Conclusion
Murthy v. Missouri held that Missouri, Louisiana, and five social-media users lacked Article III standing to obtain a preliminary injunction restricting federal officials’ communications with social-media platforms about content moderation because they did not show a substantial risk of near-future censorship injury that was fairly traceable to the named federal defendants and likely to be prevented by the requested injunction, so the Court resolved the case on standing and left the First Amendment merits undecided.