Kaelan Deese of the Washington Examiner highlights U.S. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito’s dissent from a recent high-profile case.
Justice Samuel Alito on Wednesday wrote a dissent that stood up for defenders of free speech after the majority on the Supreme Court declined to weigh the merits of a major case accusing the Biden administration of attempting to censor users on social media.
The lawsuit known as Murthy v. Missouri alleged the Biden administration violated the First Amendment with several meetings in 2021 in which officials encouraged major social media platforms — primarily Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube — to suppress posts about COVID-19 and vaccines that did not conform with U.S. government health guidelines. But the 6-3 majority opinion authored by Justice Amy Coney Barrett punted on the dispute by finding that plaintiffs lacked standing to sue the administration.
Morgan Marietta, a dean at the University of Austin’s Center of Economics, Politics & History, told the Washington Examiner that the Murthy ruling is a “part of a trend on the Court to deny standing in order to dodge difficult constitutional questions.”
“The Court has a duty to vindicate constitutional rights, no matter how politically fraught, and Justice Alito writes in dissent that the Court ‘shirks that duty,’” Marietta said.
Conservatives and free speech proponents largely expressed disappointment on Wednesday in the outcome, including independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who claimed the Supreme Court “got it wrong” on Wednesday in a post on X, formerly known as Twitter.
“Justice Alito’s dissent outlines the correct analysis, finding standing and First Amendment violations on the merits. I will continue to fight for free speech in the courts and on the campaign trail,” Kennedy wrote.
Kennedy on Wednesday also said he believed his own lawsuit, known as Kennedy v. Biden, which alleges the federal government violated the First Amendment by inducing social media companies to censor statements against vaccines, would be an appropriate vehicle to challenge the alleged censorship efforts by the Biden administration.
