Murthy v. Missouri

Look, maybe morally you and I could talk about that over a drink, but, but when it comes to doing the job, has there been a finer AG than Ken Paxton? I mean, maybe Bailey when he was in Missouri, but Paxton has been...

I mean, when you talk about Missouri v. Biden, Paxton was all over that.

When you talk about suing Google and Meta, Facebook, suing all these social, social media sites, when you talk about keeping men and boys out of girls' and womens' sports, Ken Paxton has been the guy.

Is he not touting his praises as much as I am? 'Cause how can this be tied?

The Supreme Court? Yes.

They ruled in Murphy v. Missouri in 2024 that there was no evidence in favor of this idea that the Biden administration violated the First Amendment rights of any of these people.

So that's already settled.

So they found a way around the rule.

Um, and we also saw a sort of parallel effort, um, in the courts, uh, by Republican attorneys general around the country to push back against coordination between the US government and these platforms.

So this is the, uh, Murthy v. Missouri Supreme Court case on, uh, jawboning is the term that's often used.

The argument essentially is, you know, um, if the FBI taps Facebook on the shoulder and says, "Hey, you should take this, this down," that could potentially raise First Amendment concerns.

I don't, I don't think that's an insane argument.

Okay.

When you look at the case of Murthy v. Missouri, where they ruled that the Biden administration was pressuring social media companies, namely Facebook, to take down right-wing content in the sort of early Biden administration.

And for the record, that case got really complicated, and they ended up overturning it and based not on the merits of the case, but based on jurisdiction and, uh, whether or not you, like, had the right to even sue at all in the Supreme Court.

But in the appellate court, they ruled, and the, one of the things that was happening was this sort of underpinning of a subtle threat of like, you know, "It would be a shame if we were to do some crazy stuff to Facebook, so you probably should take down all this, you know, right-wing content," and an intense pressure gambit.

They were involved in it and several others.

It was the Biden administration, Missouri v. Biden.

And that was the freedom of speech and all of that.

They went after that.