Key Quote from Missouri v. Biden (5th Circuit Court of Appeals 2023)

I'm catching up with an important court decision from September that I've been meaning to post. Here's the key quote from Missouri versus Biden, decided by the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals September 8, 2023:

[T]he Supreme Court has rarely been faced with a coordinated campaign of this magnitude orchestrated by federal officials that jeopardized a fundamental aspect of American life. Therefore, the district court was correct in its assessment—“unrelenting pressure” from certain government officials likely “had the intended result of suppressing millions of protected free speech postings by American citizens.” We see no error or abuse of discretion in that finding.
Page 61 of the Opinion

This case, will be heard by the United States Supreme Court, where it has been renamed Murthy v. Missouri (Cause No. 23A243 (23-411).

Glenn Greenwald discussed the decision of the Fifth Circuit. Here's an excerpt from his video transcript at Locals:

Tonight: One of the most significant First Amendment victories in years. In July, we reported (you can read or watch it here! https://rumble.com/v2ybni6-system-update-show-110.html) on an extraordinary ruling from a federal district court in Louisiana which ruled that the Biden administration and several key components of it, including the White House, the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security and the Center for Disease Control, had engaged in a massive and grave violation of the First Amendment's guarantee of free speech by threatening and coercing Big Tech platforms to censor the speech of American citizens those government agencies and officials disliked. The district court enjoined – barred – all officials in those agencies from communicating threats or coercion of any further kind to tech platforms with the intent to have speech censored. The case is brought by several American citizens who had their speech prohibited or their accounts banned by Big Tech at the behest of their own government. Among them was Stanford School of Medicine, Doctor J. Jay Bhattacharya, who dissented from several of the most important COVID pronouncements of the health policy establishment and for that reason alone was barred by his own government from being heard on Facebook, Twitter and elsewhere.

The Biden DOJ, which has made clear that, like Democrats generally, they regard their ability to have the Internet censored as a top priority, immediately announced they would appeal this ruling. And they did. But on Friday, a three-judge appellate court composed of two Bush nominees and one Trump nominee upheld not all, but most of the ruling, including its most foundational parts. The appellate panel emphasized what a grave and unusually invasive free speech violation this was: “The Supreme Court has rarely been faced with a coordinated campaign” of censorship code “of this magnitude orchestrated by federal officials.” The result said the court was, “suppressing millions of protected free speech postings.” The ruling was based on the long-standing principle that the First Amendment free speech guarantee not only bars the state from directly censoring but also forcing or otherwise coercing private actors to censor for them.

The appellate court found that four agencies in particular were guilty of using threats to all but force social media platforms to censor at their command – the White House the FBI, the CDC and the surgeon general – and, as a result, ban them from engaging in such communications or threats going forward. We will discuss the broad and very significant implications of this decision. We'll also speak to one of the lead lawyers who represented the plaintiffs in this case: Jenin Younes.

Continue ReadingKey Quote from Missouri v. Biden (5th Circuit Court of Appeals 2023)

Censorship Doesn’t Fix “Bad” Ideas. It Merely Shoves the Discussion Underground

Greg Lukianoff explains that censorship, no matter how well intended it is, drives conversation into the shadows, where it festers. It isolates viewpoints away from the mainstream, detached from any interaction with opposing views, where participants experience a false consensus.  Where their reach on important topics exceeds their grasp.  Those who advocate for censorship to cure "bad" ideas, always makes the situation worse by emboldening the "bad" ideas. This is one of the ideas why censorship never works. 

[C]ensorship on one platform may lead to an increase in the amount of similar content on other platforms. This is the unintended consequence of heavy-handed moderation policies.

Social media censorship creates new ecosystems that are ripe for group polarization. As Harvard law professor Cass Sunstein explains in an essay on group polarization: “People who are opposed to the minimum wage are likely, after talking to each other, to be still more opposed; people who tend to support gun control are likely, after discussion [with each other], to support gun control with considerable enthusiasm.”

For a vivid portrayal of how exclusion makes polarization, paranoia, and radicalism far worse, we highly recommend Andrew Callaghan’s documentary This Place Rules, which highlights some of the protests and personalities that played large or small roles in the run-up to, and day of, the Capitol riot on January 6, 2021. Callaghan has a grave warning about how badly attempts to censor can backfire: “When you take someone who talks about a deep state conspiracy to silence him and his followers and then you silence him and his followers it only really adds to his credibility,” he says in the film. When you’re dealing with people who believe there’s a conspiracy to shut them up, do absolutely nothing that looks anything like a conspiracy to shut them up.

Simply put, censorship doesn’t change people’s opinions. It encourages them to speak with people they already agree with, which makes political polarization even worse.

Continue ReadingCensorship Doesn’t Fix “Bad” Ideas. It Merely Shoves the Discussion Underground

New Alumni Group Advocates for Free Inquiry at Colleges

On Oct. 18, five alumni groups announced the creation of an organization to stand up for open inquiry: The Alumni Free Speech Alliance. This group consists of alumni. Why?

Because with rare exceptions, everyone else may feel too exposed to attacks to take a stand against campus culture. Our experience is that the few student free-speech groups don’t have many members (Princeton’s has about 20). Champions of free speech among faculty are badly outnumbered, even as many left-of-center professors are starting to realize that they too can be brutally canceled by the mob. Those few students and faculty who speak up often feel isolated and exposed.

University trustees, presidents and other administrators are also usually mired in the toxic campus environment, which responds to heresy with attacks. Most have either been cowed by or genuinely believe in a woke orthodoxy that sees free speech as an inconvenient disruption.

That leaves alumni as the only university stakeholders with the numbers and clout to lead the defense of free speech, academic freedom and viewpoint diversity in campus environments. Free speech and academic freedom are fundamental to the advancement of knowledge and to the success of our colleges and universities. Will all teaching and research at these schools soon be subject to a mandated orthodoxy? Will parents keep paying to send their children places where the fundamental elements of learning are suppressed? These institutions constantly seek alumni involvement and contributions. Alumni have the ability and duty to demand that their schools maintain the reasons for which they were created. But to be effective, alumni need to organize.

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The Newly Published Westminster Declaration Seeks to Dismantle the Censorship Industrial Complex

From Public, an introduction to the Westminster Declaration, an effort focused on "formal censorship by governments of online speech, not censorship at the level of the workplace or media." Several excerpts from this article:

A group of 138 scholars, public intellectuals, and journalists from across the political spectrum have issued a strong call warning the public of the Censorship Industrial Complex and urging governments to dismantle it in the name of the “first liberty,” freedom of speech. It’s called The Westminster Declaration ...

The signatory list includes scholars like Jonathan Haidt, Steven Pinker, and John McWhorter, actors like Tim Robbins and John Cleese, journalists like Glenn Greenwald, Bari Weiss, and Lee Fang, and scientists like Jay Bhattacharya. It includes prominent free speech advocates like Julian Assange, Edward Snowden, Nadine Strossen, Greg Lukianoff, and many more.

You may notice that the signatory list features thinkers from the Left, like Slavoj Žižek, as well as thinkers from the Right, like Jordan Peterson. People with very different political views have signed the declaration, and you may also notice that individuals with significant disagreements have signed it. That is precisely the point. It is only through free speech that robust political, ethical, and scientific debates can take place.

“Across the globe,” the Declaration reads, “government actors, social media companies, universities, and NGOs are increasingly working to monitor citizens and rob them of their voices. …the Censorship Industrial Complex operates through more subtle methods. These include visibility filtering, labelling, and manipulation of search engine results. Through deplatforming and flagging, social media censors have already silenced lawful opinions on topics of national and geopolitical importance.”

Those who claim they are simply “fighting misinformation” are, in truth, attempting to control the minds of the public. This is exceedingly dangerous since, ”time and time again, unpopular opinions and ideas have eventually become conventional wisdom. By labeling certain political or scientific positions as 'misinformation' or 'malinformation,' our societies risk getting stuck in false paradigms that will rob humanity of hard-earned knowledge and obliterate the possibility of gaining new knowledge. Free speech is our best defense against disinformation.”

While we do not intend to add any additional signatories to the Declaration, given the significant amount of time already invested, we welcome endorsements in the form of articles and social media posts by those who agree with it. We are happy to note that The New York Post, The Telegraph of London, The Times of London, Die Welt, France-Soir, La Veritá, and other newspapers have written about or will soon publish articles about the Declaration.

The opening passages to the Westminster Declaration:

We write as journalists, artists, authors, activists, technologists, and academics to warn of increasing international censorship that threatens to erode centuries-old democratic norms.

Coming from the left, right, and centre, we are united by our commitment to universal human rights and freedom of speech, and we are all deeply concerned about attempts to label protected speech as ‘misinformation,’ ‘disinformation,’ and other ill-defined terms.

This abuse of these terms has resulted in the censorship of ordinary people, journalists, and dissidents in countries all over the world.

Such interference with the right to free speech suppresses valid discussion about matters of urgent public interest, and undermines the foundational principles of representative democracy.

Across the globe, government actors, social media companies, universities, and NGOs are increasingly working to monitor citizens and rob them of their voices. These large-scale coordinated efforts are sometimes referred to as the ‘Censorship-Industrial Complex.’

Continue ReadingThe Newly Published Westminster Declaration Seeks to Dismantle the Censorship Industrial Complex