Episode 241: A Victory for Free Speech with Jenin Younes

“America needs to come to terms with the reality and scale of the assault on free speech. Our government has established a vast system of censorship. By keeping it largely secret, it has been able to exert unconstitutional control over medical, scientific and political speech, suppressing debate over questions of great public importance. This is a shocking constitutional violation. All of us, not only the courts, need to recognize what is at stake.” 

But the calvary may finally be arriving. With the recent ruling in the “State of Missouri vs Joseph R Biden et al” a major first shot has been fired at the “surveillance state”.

Judge Terry A. Doughty of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Louisiana has issued a preliminary injunction ruling that the Biden administration and other federal agencies suppressed free speech in an “Orwellian” manner during the pandemic.

In a significant victory for free speech, Doughty ruled that the Biden administration, including:

• the White House

• the FBI

• the Department of Justice

• the Surgeon General

• the CDC

• the Department of Health and Human Services 

and other federal agencies could not communicate with or coerce the social media companies for “the purpose of urging, encouraging, pressuring, or inducing in any manner the removal, deletion, suppression, or reduction of content containing protected free speech.

And last week, the news got better.

In oral arguments during the federal government’s appeal of Judge Doughty’s ruling, the appellate judges resisted the Biden administration’s arguments trying to defend its social media censorship regime.

Nearly all of the points raised by DOJ lawyer Daniel Tenny, were met with skepticism by the three judges hearing the case. 

Judge Jennifer Walker Elrod said the administration claiming it merely had a “very close working relationship” with social media companies was like the mob making demands without having to “spell out things.”

On the front lines in the case as one of the lead plaintiff attorneys, Jenin Younes with the New Civil Liberties Alliance joins me in this episode to talk about what’s at stake. 

She explains:

“Essentially government employees in an astonishing number of agencies, including the White House, the CDC, the FBI, a Homeland Security agency called the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, were using all means of tactics, pressure, threats, and coercion in order to get the social media companies to censor people who expressed views that were different from the Biden administration’s.”

The explosion of social-media platforms has resulted in unique free speech issues.

Where the government - not directly but through platforms like Facebook and Twitter - has attempted to suppress alleged “disinformation” and blatantly ignored our First Amendment right to free speech.

This was especially true during the COVID-19 pandemic.  

Listen in for an astonishing story of how government abused its power to censor speech.

Fortunately we now have judges ruling for our right to free speech.

All in this episode of The Bill Walton Show.