Former President Donald Trump urged the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday to support a Florida state law that bans Big Tech from censoring political speech — and more specifically, conservatives.
As The Free Press reported on Monday, Trump’s think tank, the America First Policy Institute, intervened in the legal challenge to the 2021 law following its defeat in a federal appellate court.
Back in May, the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the law violated the First Amendment by directing the tech giants — such as Twitter, Facebook, and Tik Tok — on how to moderate their content.
When he signed the law last year, Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis noted, “This session, we took action to ensure that ‘We the People’ — real Floridians across the Sunshine State — are guaranteed protection against the Silicon Valley elites. Many in our state have experienced censorship and other tyrannical behaviors firsthand in Cuba and Venezuela. If Big Tech censors enforce rules inconsistently, to discriminate in favor of the dominant Silicon Valley ideology, they will now be held accountable.”
After the appellate court ruling, DeSantis spokesman Bryan Griffin said the administration was “disappointed that the Court continues to permit censorship.”
“The Court’s central holding that social media platforms are similar to newspapers and parades, rather than common carriers that transmit others’ messages, is stupefying,” he added.
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Liberals, naturally, cheered the ruling because it furthered one of their aims: to silence, if not deplatform, conservatives.
But the problem for liberals is that Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt, a Republican, is advancing a lawsuit that asserts the Biden administration colluded with Big Tech to silence dissent to COVID-19 information.
Schmitt’s office on Friday announced that a federal court had granted a request by Missouri and Louisiana to question top officials in the Biden administration about suppressing speech. The potential witnesses included Dr. Anthony Fauci, former White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki, and Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, among others.
“After finding documentation of a collusive relationship between the Biden Administration and social media companies to censor free speech, we immediately filed a motion to get these officials under oath,” Schmitt said in a statement.
“It is high time we shine a light on this censorship enterprise and force these officials to come clean to the American people, and this ruling will allow us to do just that. We’ll keep pressing for the truth.”
As for the Florida law, John Coale, a lawyer for Trump, “Similar to other common carriers like airlines, Big Tech welcomes all customers. And while companies can set standards for the usage of their products, such as purchasing a ticket to travel, they must apply those standards evenly and fairly. Big Tech currently does not.”
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