Tech Police

Free speech suffers a setback:

PJ Media’s Chris Queen explained, “The court ruled that the plaintiffs didn't have standing to sue the federal government for pressuring social media companies to suppress opinions about COVID that didn't fit the government's narrative.” This tacitly gives the government carte blanche to demand that social media censor whatever they falsely label “misinformation,” a serious blow to the sacred First Amendment, one which legal analyst Jonathan Turley labeled “censorship by surrogate.” Blaze TV podcaster Matt Kibbe pulled no punches: “This reveals the real majority in the Supreme Court, and they hate you for your liberties.” Constitutional law expert Jonathan Turley told Fox News, "It's very frustrating for the free speech community because standing is often used to block meritorious claims." "This is one of the most fundamental issues that we are facing," he added. "I just wrote about this issue, this case, in my recent book because you have one of the largest censorship systems in our history, if not the largest. It's been called Orwellian by lower court judges, and what the court is saying is that we won't hear you on this issue because you're not the right litigants." Turley noted that he's always been a "dove" on standing, and added, "I believe that these standing decisions are too narrow because they do prevent the court from rendering a decision on such important constitutional questions." "So this issue will have to wait for another day," he continued, "but one of the things that many of us have been arguing for years is that the government is engaging in censorship by surrogate. I testified about this in Congress, that they have made a mockery of the limits of the First Amendment by doing indirectly what they're barred from doing directly. They're using academic and corporate allies to bar and cancel and blacklist critics on a variety of different subjects. So it's going to be very frustrating for the free speech community."

Censorship lives, for now...