Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito said that the Trump administration "wielded significant power" over Facebook in a new ruling blasting the Biden administration for "coercing" social media platforms during the pandemic.
The Supreme Court sided with the Biden administration in a challenge brought by Republican-led states Wednesday, ruling in a 6-3 decision that the plaintiffs lacked standing to sue the federal government over injuries that they allegedly received as a result of content moderation. Three of the conservatives on the bench dissented. Alito was joined by Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch.
While arguing that the communications between the White House and Facebook showed that Biden officials "skillfully exploited Facebook's vulnerability," Alito noted that the Biden administration wasn't the first to do so.
"Previous administrations have also wielded significant power over Facebook," Alito wrote in his dissent before going on to cite a case that took place during the Trump presidency.
"In a data-privacy case brought jointly by the Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission, Facebook was required 'to pay an unprecedented $5 billion civil penalty,' which is 'among the largest civil penalties ever obtained by the federal government,'" Alito said.
In 2019, the Justice Department, under the Trump administration, announced that Facebook would be charged a multibillion-dollar fine after an FTC investigation found that the platform deceiving users about "the extent to which third-party application developers could access users' personal information."
The FTC case, inspired by Facebook's involvement in the Cambridge Analytica data scandal, was widely seen as a test for both the agency and its Trump-nominated Chairman, Joe Simons. Cambridge Analytica was a political consulting firm that worked for Trump's 2016 campaign.
In his dissent, Alito argued that because "the White House had not gotten everything it wanted from" private conversations with Facebook, it went a step further, "turning up the heat in public."
"When Facebook did not heed their requests as quickly or as fully as the officials wanted, the platform was publicly accused of 'killing people' and subtly threatened with retaliation," Alito wrote.
"Not surprisingly these efforts bore fruit. Facebook adopted new rules that better conformed to the officials' wishes, and many users who expressed disapproved views about the pandemic or COVID–19 vaccines were 'deplatformed' or otherwise injured."
However, writing for the majority, Justice Amy Coney Barrett said that social media platforms "acting independently, had strengthened their pre-existing content moderation policies before the government defendants got involved."
"So it is 'difficult to see how' the plaintiffs' self-censorship 'can be traced to' the defendants," the court's opinion said.
Update 06/26/24, 11:19 a.m. ET: This article was updated with additional information.
Uncommon Knowledge
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
fairness meter
To Rate This Article
About the writer
Katherine Fung is a Newsweek reporter based in New York City. Her focus is reporting on U.S. and world politics. ... Read more
