Supreme Court to debate whether White House crosses First Amendment line on social media disinformation

Ruling could have impact on efforts to fight election and Covid disinformation

For doctors like Eileen Barrett, a pending Supreme Court case challenging the government’s ability to communicate with social media companies isn’t principally a fight about the fraught politics of online speech. Instead, they say, it’s a matter of life and death. “I have seen countless statements that are at best problematic and at worst flat-out disinformation that I’m terribly fearful are causing harm to patients,” said Barrett, who chairs the board of regents of the American College of Physicians. “We’ve all taken care of somebody who has died from the flu. And now we’ve all taken care of people who have died from Covid.” Biden administration officials have for years persuaded social media platforms such as Facebook and X to take down posts that include misinformation about vaccines, the Covid-19 pandemic and the 2020 election, among other things. But the Supreme Court must now decide whether those efforts go too far – when the government, in other words, veers into censorship on social media that violates the First Amendment. The case could prove pivotal to the 2024 election. Its outcome could determine whether the Department of Homeland Security can legally flag posts to social media companies that may be the work of foreign disinformation agents seeking to disrupt the race. Blocking that line of communication would undo years of collaboration that began as a response to bombshell revelations that Russia tried to meddle in the 2016 US elections.