The Missouri and Louisiana Attorneys General are asking a court to block what they have alleged is the “flagrantly unconstitutional” censorship collusion of the Biden administration with Big Tech.
Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey issued a March 6 press release about his ongoing lawsuit alleging Big Tech-government collusion to censor speech online. Bailey and Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry filed a motion for a preliminary injunction in State of Louisiana, State of Missouri, et al. v. Biden.
Based on the thousands of internal federal documents they have received, the attorneys general are asking for court intervention to stop federal officials from colluding with Big Tech to censor Americans.
“Altogether, these censorship activities by federal officials and agencies constitute a gargantuan federal ‘Censorship Enterprise’… its activities are flagrantly unconstitutional,” noted the attorneys general. The lawsuit cited original MRC research from our unique CensorTrack database.
“Big Tech ignoring the American principle of free speech to silence conservatives is bad enough, but here we have two state attorneys general alleging that a sitting president and his administration colluded with Big Tech to silence their political opposition,” said MRC Free Speech America & MRC Business Director Michael Morris. “Other state AGs, Congressmen and individuals in positions of authority within government need to dig in, investigate and expose any and all efforts to undermine America’s first freedoms. This draconian, anti-free speech nightmare must be put to bed.”
The press release said that their motion for preliminary injunction highlights no fewer than 1,432 facts demonstrating federal officials “coercing and colluding with big tech” to censor Americans’ free speech.
These facts, according to the press release, include ex-NIAID Director Dr. Anthony Fauci coercing social media to censor the now-vindicated COVID lab leak theory. They also show censorship pressure and coordination from the Biden White House, Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, the CDC, FBI, Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), and the State Department’s Global Engagement Center (GEC).
The CDC, for instance, organized “Be On the Lookout” or “BOLO” meetings, the press release reported, and CISA and GEC formed public-private partnerships such as with the leftist Election Integrity Partnership to censor speech. The government outsourced election censorship to EIP in 2020 and 2022. All these government agencies ended up flagging and censoring “enormous volumes of Americans’ speech on social media,” the press release stated.
The First Amendment is the “cornerstone of our republic,” said Bailey, insisting more speech is the answer to false speech. “This case is the most important free speech lawsuit in a generation,” he continued. “I will not rest until the court blocks unelected bureaucrats from violating our constitutional right to free and open debate.”
Louisiana AG Landry agreed. “The overwhelming evidence is clear: the highest levels of our federal government are suppressing the First Amendment rights of Americans who have opposing views,” he said. He insisted that federal agencies’ “egregious and unlawful” censorship “chills speech” and “unjustly inflicts grave and irreparable injuries on citizens and states, whose duty it is to protect their fundamental rights.”
Then-Missouri AG Eric Schmitt and Landry originally filed their bombshell lawsuit uncovering the “vast censorship enterprise” between government and Big Tech in May 2022.
Conservatives are under attack. Contact your representatives and demand that government agencies and Big Tech be held to account to uphold the First Amendment. If you have been censored, contact us at the Media Research Center contact form, and help us hold Big Tech accountable.
