The Supreme Court rejected the standing of the State of Missouri and five individuals in the censorship and free speech case surrounding social media. The court came down with a 6-3 decision, Justice Amy Coney-Barrett writing the majority opinion. Justices Alito, Gorsuch and Thomas dissented in the minority.
The background of the case was very familiar to this audience, as the Biden administration was previously blocked by lower courts from telling social media platforms to remove content against their interests. Today, the Supreme Court rejected the standing of the plaintiffs, essentially giving a green light to the USA government to begin controlling social media platforms again.
If you read the opinion [FULL PDF HERE], I would strongly urge readers to focus beginning on page #11 of the Justice Barrett opinion. It is obvious in the three or four pages that follow, the court was looking for an exit from the free speech issue. Denying the case on “standing” grounds became their justification for the cop-out.
Barrett goes out of her way to make the standing issue the crux of the majority opinion. Comey-Barrett dismisses all the instances of censorship and coerced removal under the auspices that the relief sought by the plaintiffs was for future harm, not past injury. The lower courts had ruled the government could not interfere with speech in the future, without establishing that each individual plaintiff was harmed specifically by each action of the government.
Social media platforms did some censorship and content removal on their own, without government direction. Therefore, it becomes impossible for the court to determine which censorship decisions were made by government coercion, and which were made by the social media platform with ordinary moderation rules being applied. {pdf page #11}
Supreme Court Allows Government Control Over Speech on Social Media Platforms, Rejects Standing in Murthy vs Missouri
American Buddhist Net 
