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It is unconstitutional the plaintiffs argue for the federal government to try to persuade platforms to take down constitutionally protected speech.

And that's why a lot of the questions at argument yesterday were focused on all of the circumstances

in which the government historically and up to the present day does that routinely as a matter of course and you know a lot of

justices were trying to grapple with what the implications of the plaintiffs

very broad legal theory you know would be but if they accept that legal theory then the plaintiffs probably

have a strong case you know but to accept that legal theory would be to essentially

undo 60 years of legal precedent in the lower court focusing on the line between persuasion and

coercion.

I'm Quinta Jurisic, a senior editor at Law Fair, and this is the Law Fair Podcast, March 21st, 2024.

Today we're bringing you an episode of Arbiters of Truth, our series on the information ecosystem.

On March 18th the Supreme Court heard oral arguments

in Murphy v Missouri concerning the potential First Amendment implications of

government outreach to social media platforms, what's sometimes known as jaw-boning.

The case arrived at the Supreme Court with a somewhat shaky evidentiary record,

but the legal questions raised by government requests or demands to remove online

content are real.

To make sense of it all, Matt Peralton I called up Alex Abdo, the litigation director of the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University.

While the law in this area is unsettled, the Supreme Court seems skeptical of the plaintiff's claims of government censorship.

...