CNN
—
A federal appeals court narrowed a judge’s order that blocked Biden administration officials from communicating with social media companies.
With its new ruling Friday, the US 5th Circuit Court of Appeals reversed much of the controversial order issued as part of a lawsuit brought by Republican attorneys general that claimed the administration engaged in unconstitutional censorship in its efforts to combat Covid-19 disinformation.
The three-judge panel said the preliminary injunction issued by US District Judge Terry Doughty in July was “both vague and broader than necessary to remedy the Plaintiffs’ injuries, as shown at this preliminary juncture.”
The appeals court reversed several aspects of Doughty’s sweeping order, concluding that those pieces of it risked blocking the federal government “from engaging in legal conduct.”
The 5th circuit left the order, which had been temporarily blocked earlier in the summer, on pause for 10 days so that the case can be appealed to the Supreme Court.
The opinion was handed down jointly by Circuit Judges Edith Clement, Jennifer Walker Elrod and Don Willett – all appointees of Republican presidents.
The conservative appeals court sided with many of the arguments put forward by the plaintiffs, which included private individuals as well Missouri and Louisiana.
The appeals court said that certain administration officials – namely in the White House, the surgeon general, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation – likely “coerced or significantly encouraged social media platforms to moderate content” in violation of the First Amendment. However, the appeals court disagreed with the lower court’s finding of likely constitutional violations among other federal agencies that were targeted in the lawsuit.
The 5th Circuit left in place the part of the injunction that barred certain Biden administration officials from “threatening, pressuring, or coercing social-media companies in any manner to remove, delete, suppress, or reduce posted content of postings containing protected free speech.”
“But, those terms could also capture otherwise legal speech,” the appeals court said. “So, the injunction’s language must be further tailored to exclusively target illegal conduct and provide the officials with additional guidance or instruction on what behavior is prohibited.”
The appeals court also narrowed the injunction’s scope so that it only applied to the White House, the surgeon general, the CDC and the FBI. Doughty had included other agencies in his July order.
This story has been updated with additional information.
