A federal appeals court on Friday upheld key parts of a preliminary injunction against federal interference with content moderation on social media platforms. A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit unanimously agreed that the White House, Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and the FBI had "coerced" or "significantly encouraged" the platforms, "in violation of the First Amendment," to suppress speech that federal officials viewed as dangerously inaccurate or misleading. But the 5th Circuit also said the injunction that U.S. District Judge Terry Doughty issued in July was excessively broad and covered too many agencies.
During the last few years, the 5th Circuit notes in a per curiam opinion joined by Judges Edith Brown Clement, Jennifer Walker Elrod, and Don Willett, "a group of federal officials has been in regular contact with nearly every major American social-media company about the spread of 'misinformation' on their platforms. In their concern, those officials—hailing from the White House, the CDC, the FBI, and a few other agencies—urged the platforms to remove disfavored content and accounts from their sites."
