No feat of rhetoric could disguise the flagrantly political nature of the federal court ruling on July 4 that restricted the Biden administration’s communications with social media platforms — but Judge Terry A. Doughty, who wrote the opinion, did his best to cover his tracks. The 155-page opinion, which could hinder the government’s efforts to counter false and misleading online speech about issues like election interference and vaccine safety, is laced with lofty references to George Orwell and quotations from Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson, making it more reminiscent of a civics essay than a federal judicial opinion.
But the far more objectionable part of Judge Doughty’s ruling in the case, which was brought in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Louisiana by two Republican state attorneys general, is the cherry-picked legal analysis attached to an overbroad injunction. …
The resulting ruling, however, is not just a muddled set of instructions for communication between government and tech platforms (an urgent issue for those concerned with misinformation as we approach the 2024 presidential election). It is also a bellwether of a disconcerting new political tactic: using state and local authorities, along with federal forum- and judge-shopping, to make national internet policy.