{"id":23959,"date":"2026-03-27T09:47:09","date_gmt":"2026-03-27T09:47:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/?p=23959"},"modified":"2026-03-27T09:47:09","modified_gmt":"2026-03-27T09:47:09","slug":"consent-decree-marks-final-defeat-of-orwellian-biden-censorship-regime","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/?p=23959","title":{"rendered":"Consent Decree Marks Final Defeat of \u2018Orwellian\u2019 Biden \u2018Censorship Regime\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n Reading Time:<\/span> 4<\/span> minutes<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

During\u00a0the COVID-19 pandemic, federal health agencies and the White House under President Joe Biden pressured social media companies to censor speech that contradicted the federal government\u2019s narrative, but two Republican attorneys general secured a consent decree Tuesday that will prevent the government from returning to that \u201cOrwellian\u201d strategy.\n<\/p>\n

Let the IFA community know how to pray for you.<\/h4>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was absolutely Orwellian,\u201d Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill told\u00a0The Daily Signal\u00a0in a phone interview Tuesday. \u201cThe federal government is enormously powerful and they leveraged that power to threaten something that these companies hold very dear\u2014which is their Section 230 immunity\u2014and that threat was enough to essentially have these companies make themselves agents of the federal government.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

\u201cMissouri will not allow politicians to police speech,\u201d Missouri Attorney General Catherine Hanaway, also a Republican, told The Daily Signal. \u201cThe Biden censorship regime was something straight out of Orwell\u2019s 1984. Missouri is proud to have led the most consequential fight for free speech in a generation.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

The consent decree notes that the federal government \u201cunlawfully pressured, coerced, induced, and encouraged major social media platforms to censor their posts\u201d about the pandemic, the reports about\u00a0Hunter Biden\u2019s laptop, and the 2020 presidential election.\n<\/p>\n

While the First Amendment prohibits the federal government from directly censoring speech, the plaintiffs accused the Biden administration of pressuring social media companies to do what the government itself could not.\n<\/p>\n

\u00a0\n<\/p>\n

Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996 grants tech companies legal immunity for speech published on their platforms, though critics have urged reform to the policy.\n<\/p>\n

\u201cOne of the most egregious acts of corruption by the Biden administration was its pressure campaign against social media companies to censor the free speech of everyday Americans,\u201d White House spokesman Kush Desai told The Daily Signal.\n<\/p>\n

\u201cNo president and no movement have experienced censorship more in recent years than President [Donald] Trump and the MAGA movement, and this administration is committed to ensuring Americans\u2019 First Amendment rights are never impinged again.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

Censorship and the Supreme Court<\/h2>\n

The attorney general noted that leaders in the Biden administration were \u201cvery deliberately chilling speech they disliked even though it was true.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

A Media Research Center\u00a0report from 2020\u00a0found that many Biden voters said they would not have voted for the Democrat if they had known about the revelations from Hunter Biden\u2019s laptop, which social media companies suppressed after the FBI suggested it had been Russian misinformation.\n<\/p>\n

In 2021, a Facebook staffer told a Biden White House official that the company\u00a0suppressed \u201coften true content\u201d\u00a0because it contradicted the White House\u2019s narrative about COVID-19 vaccines.\n<\/p>\n

Louisiana and Missouri, joined by social media users whose content had been suppressed, sued in May 2022, aiming to block the censorship. On July 4, 2023, a federal district judge granted the plaintiffs a preliminary injunction,\u00a0ordering the government to stop\u00a0the censorship scheme.\n<\/p>\n

The Biden administration appealed the case, however, and the\u00a0Supreme Court struck down the injunction, finding that the plaintiffs lacked standing\u2014meaning they could not prove that the government\u2019s actions resulted in direct harms to them that the court could stop.\n<\/p>\n

As the consent decree explains, however, the Supreme Court found that no plaintiff demonstrated standing for a\u00a0preliminary injunction<\/em>, but it did not strike the overall lawsuit.\n<\/p>\n

Amid the litigation, Trump signed\u00a0Executive Order 14149\u00a0on Jan. 20, 2025. The order acknowledged the Biden administration\u2019s censorship efforts and directed agencies to identify and take actions to correct past misconduct. In light of this order, the federal agencies at issue agreed to enter into the consent decree.\n<\/p>\n

Murrill acknowledged that federal entities not covered by the consent decree\u2014notably agencies such as the FBI\u2014arguably engaged in the suppression of free speech via social media pressure. She emphasized, however, that the consent decree sets a precedent that should help address any future attempts to silence speech.\n<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re getting a consent decree that recognizes the federal government\u2019s obligation to abide by the First Amendment and giving us an enforceable means to ensure that they do for the next ten years,\u201d she explained.\n<\/p>\n

\u201cWe can\u2019t undo what they did in the sense that when they throttled people\u2019s speech and they forced their message out to the direct exclusion of contrary messaging,\u201d Murrill noted. \u201cThat was an injury to the entire country to deprive them of true speech and true messaging and force the government\u2019s message on them while other messaging was being blocked.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

She noted that, unlike an executive order\u2014which a future president could strike down with the stroke of a pen\u2014the consent decree \u201ccreates a binding agreement between the parties that can be judicially enforced.\u201d Terminating the decree would require \u201ca new round of litigation.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

Share your prayers for the protection of free speech in the comments.<\/h4>\n

This article was originally published at The Daily Signal. Photo Credit: VA\/Eugene Russell-Army Veteran.<\/em>
\n \n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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