WASHINGTON — The Biden administration said a court order barring some federal agencies and officials from communicating with social media companies is overbroad and “ambiguous,” and asked a judge to pause it while the government appeals.
In a motion filed Thursday in federal district court in Louisiana, the Justice Department argued that a nationwide injunction entered earlier this week by U.S. District Judge Terry Doughty could interfere with the government’s efforts to work with tech companies “on initiatives to prevent grave harm to the American people and our democratic processes.”
Doughty’s July 4 order took immediate effect. The Justice Department asked him to halt it while it takes the fight to the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. If the judge denies the request, the department said it would it would file an emergency request for a stay with the appeals court.
In his 155-page opinion, Doughty, a nominee of former President Donald Trump, had concluded that the government likely violated the First Amendment of the Constitution in the way it tried to urge online platforms to limit the spread of misinformation and fake accounts, especially during the pandemic.
His injunction barred a wide range of agencies and public officials from “urging, encouraging, pressuring, or inducing” social media companies to remove or restrict content covered by the First Amendment’s free speech protections. The judge included exceptions for communications about criminal activity, national security threats, election integrity issues, and other “permissible public government speech.”
The Justice Department on Thursday argued that the terms of the injunction were vague and would leave it up to every individual agency official to have to figure out if certain online speech was or wasn’t constitutionally protected. The government also said it wasn’t clear which federal entities and employees were covered.
“The potential breadth of the entities and employees covered by the injunction combined with the injunction’s sweeping substantive scope will chill a wide range of lawful government conduct relating to defendants’ law enforcement responsibilities, obligations to protect the national security, and prerogative to speak on matters of public concern,” government attorneys wrote.
They added that the plaintiffs — the Republican attorneys general of Missouri and Louisiana and individual users — wouldn’t be harmed by a temporary pause on the injunction since it had already taken the judge a year to rule.
The government noted in its brief that the plaintiffs opposed the request for a stay of Doughty’s order. It asked the judge to rule on its request by noon on Monday in Louisiana.
The case is State of Louisiana v. Biden, 3:22-cv-01213, US District Court, Western District of Louisiana (Monroe).
