JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. – Today, Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey announced that the United States Supreme Court has cleared the way for his office to obtain more discovery in his landmark First Amendment case exposing Joe Biden’s censorship regime. In his case, Murthy v. Missouri, Attorney General Bailey argued that top officials in the federal government coerced big tech social media companies into violating Americans’ right to free speech. Today, the Supreme Court ruled that while there were blatant First Amendment violations in 2021, his office should obtain additional discovery to further root out the censorship occurring in later years.
“My office filed suit against dozens of officials in the federal government to stop the biggest violation of the First Amendment in our nation’s history. The record is clear: the deep state pressured and coerced social media companies to take down truthful speech simply because it was conservative. Today’s ruling does not dispute that. My rallying cry to disappointed Americans is this: Missouri is not done. We are going back to the district court to obtain more discovery in order to root out Joe Biden’s vast censorship enterprise once and for all,” said Attorney General Bailey. “We will remain vigilant to build the wall of separation between tech and state, but I could not be prouder of what my team and this case has exposed so far. Missouri will continue to lead the way in the fight to defend our most fundamental freedoms.”
Missouri v. Biden, which later became Murthy v. Missouri, was filed by the attorneys general of Missouri and Louisiana on May 5, 2022. Missouri and Louisiana revealed the extent of the vast censorship enterprise after obtaining more than 20,000 pages of documents in discovery and deposing top-ranking officials in the federal government under oath, including Dr. Anthony Fauci, FBI Special Agent Elvis Chan, Eric Waldo of the Surgeon General’s Office, Carol Crawford of the CDC, Brian Scully of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, and Daniel Kimmage of the State Department.
General Bailey and then-Attorney General Jeff Landry filed their motion for preliminary injunction on March 6, 2023, citing more than 1,400 facts showing that top officials in the federal government coerced and colluded with big tech social media companies to violate Americans’ right to free speech.
On July 4, 2023, the federal district court granted Missouri and Louisiana’s motion to block top officials in the federal government from continuing to violate the First Amendment rights of millions of Americans. The Fifth Circuit upheld the injunction twice.
Then on June 26, 2024, the Supreme Court cleared the way for Attorney General Bailey to obtain more discovery and depositions in the landmark First Amendment case. His office is evaluating all other options in the fight to combat censorship.
The decision can be read here.