The Supreme Court struck down a lower court’s injunction preventing the federal government from pressuring Big Tech companies to suppress free speech in a pivotal ruling Wednesday.
The court did not rule on the question of whether the government may pressure social media companies to suppress speech in a way that would be illegal for the government to do itself. Instead, the court ruled that the plaintiffs failed to establish Article III standing to bring the case.
“We begin—and end—with standing,” Justice Amy Coney Barrett wrote in the majority opinion for Murthy v. Missouri. “At this stage, neither the individual nor the state plaintiffs have established standing to seek an injunction against any defendant. We therefore lack jurisdiction to reach the merits of the dispute.”
Barrett delivered the majority opinion, in which Chief Justice John Roberts…
