Free Speech Depends On SCOTUS Rejecting The Government’s Censorship Excuses In Murthy v. Missouri, by Scott Street

On July 4, 2023, Louisiana-based federal Judge Terry Doughty issued a historic decision in the censorship case then called Missouri v. Biden (the case was filed by two state attorneys general, including Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt, who now sits in the U.S. Senate). The decisions made news not just for the result and the date it was issued, but for the importance Doughty showed to the underlying issue.

In fact, Doughty’s opinion echoed the lofty rhetoric of the great federal court decisions issued during the civil rights era. But the political dynamic had flipped. Instead of liberal federal judges siding with the federal government to strike down prejudiced state and local laws, as in the ’50s and ’60s, here we had a conservative judge siding with local officials and private citizens against a federal bureaucracy run by the Democrat Party. …