Trump-appointed judge refers to 'regime change' while taking swipe at Harris in social media censorship case
Source: Law & Crime
Nov 8th, 2024, 8:04 pm
A federal judge appointed by Donald Trump appears to have mocked Vice President Kamala Harris on Friday in an order related to a long-running and controversial social media censorship case. “We now consistently proceed — burdened by what has been,” U.S. District Judge Terry A. Doughty wrote in the order, an apparent reference to one of the failed presidential candidate’s trademark and oft-repeated stump speech lines: “unburdened by what has been.” Later in the order, the court also muses about “regime change” and how Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. might soon find himself in charge of a federal public health agency — calling that eventuality “relevant” and “wild.”
In the underlying case, Republican attorneys general in Louisiana and Missouri sued the Biden administration over a policy encouraging social media platforms to remove COVID-19-related misinformation — arguing that those requests violated the First Amendment. On Independence Day in 2023, the district court issued a 155-page opinion and order that likened the Biden administration to an Orwellian “Ministry of Truth.” In an accompanying injunction, Doughty ordered federal officials and agencies to cease all contact with social media firms that could potentially interfere with free speech. The administration appealed and lost — at first.
In September 2023, the conservative U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit agreed with Doughty that officials with the FBI, CDC, the White House, and the COVID-19 Response Team likely violated the First Amendment by “coercing and significantly encouraging” social media platforms to “censor disfavored” speech. Days later, the Department of Justice went to the nation’s high court.
In the application for a stay pending appeal, Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar rubbished Doughty’s original order as “an unprecedented injunction installing the United States District Court for the Western District of Louisiana as the superintendent of the Executive Branch’s communications with and about social-media platforms." Originally stylized as Missouri v. Biden, the case was later refashioned into Murthy v. Missouri — and then remanded back down to the district court level, a victory for the government.
Read more: https://lawandcrime.com/high-profile/trump-appointed-judge-refers-to-regime-change-while-taking-swipe-at-harris-in-social-media-censorship-case/
Link to ORDER (PDF) - https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.lawd.189520/gov.uscourts.lawd.189520.404.0.pdf
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