Free Speech is Protected (For Now)

U.S. Federal District Judge orders Federal Government to stop censoring Constitutionally protected speech

Alex Berenson, who sued Twitter and won, who is currently suing the Federal Government for ordering Twitter to censor him, reports that Federal District Judge Terry Doughty ordered several Federal agencies to stop censoring Constitutionally protected speech: IT'S INDEPENDENCE (FROM CENSORSHIP) DAY.

The seven-page Preliminary Injunction names all the Federal agencies and officials subject to this order, and specifies that the order applies to:

(1) meeting with 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;

(2) specifically flagging content or posts on social-media platforms and/or forwarding such to social-media companies urging, encouraging, pressuring, or inducing in any manner for removal, deletion, suppression, or reduction of content containing protected free speech;

(3) urging, encouraging, pressuring, or inducing in any manner social-media companies to change their guidelines for removing, deleting, suppressing, or reducing content containing protected free speech;

(4) emailing, calling, sending letters, texting, or engaging in any communication of any kind with social-media companies urging, encouraging, pressuring, or inducing in any manner for removal, deletion, suppression, or reduction of content containing protected free speech;

(5) collaborating, coordinating, partnering, switchboarding, and/or jointly working with the Election Integrity Partnership, the Virality Project, the Stanford Internet Observatory, or any like project or group for the purpose of urging, encouraging, pressuring, or inducing in any manner removal, deletion, suppression, or reduction of content posted with social-media companies containing protected free speech;

(6) threatening, pressuring, or coercing social-media companies in any manner to remove, delete, suppress, or reduce posted content of postings containing protected free speech;

(7) taking any action such as urging, encouraging, pressuring, or inducing in any manner social-media companies to remove, delete, suppress, or reduce posted content protected by the Free Speech Clause of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution;

(8) following up with social-media companies to determine whether the social-media companies removed, deleted, suppressed, or reduced previous social-media postings containing protected free speech;

(9) requesting content reports from social-media companies detailing actions taken to remove, delete, suppress, or reduce content containing protected free speech; and

(10) notifying social-media companies to Be on The Lookout (“BOLO”) for postings containing protected free speech.

In other words, all the censorship and threat activities that Federal agencies have engaged in and continue to engage in are prohibited. The widely practiced workaround of using nominally private companies to follow Government directives is likewise ‘precludes said named Defendants, their agents, officers, employees, and contractors from acting in concert with others who are engaged in said conduct’. The Injunction concludes ‘Thus, Done And Signed In Monroe, Louisiana, This 4th Day Of July 2023 Terry A. Doughty, United States District Judge’. One can almost hear the Liberty Bell ringing.

Here is the full opinion, and here is the Judge’s further explanation of why free speech is essential to a free society. It is a sign of the times that this piece of common-sense must be articulated again for those who either never learned it or who persist in flouting it. Yet decisions like this, if sustained by higher Courts, are what Independence Day is all about.