NRB filed an amicus brief recently in the case of Vivek H. Murthy et al v. State of Missouri et al, which centers on whether federal officials can communicate with social media sites to censor ideas they consider misinformation.

NRB asked the U.S. Supreme Court to conclude that the government “may never seek to suppress protected speech,” adding that government officials cannot “legitimately construct a rule of orthodoxy on any matter of public concern.”

Attorney Michael Farris, the former head of the Alliance Defending Freedom and Home School Legal Defense Association said “There is no effort by the government to contend that the speech that they sought to suppress was unprotected by the First Amendment. Nor could such a claim be taken seriously.” 

Last year, the Republican attorneys general of Missouri and Louisiana sued the Biden administration over allegations the federal government unlawfully worked with major social media platforms like Facebook and X to censor posts promoting conservative viewpoints or news that portrayed the Biden family in a negative light.

These censored posts included dissenting views on how to mitigate COVID-19, a theory that COVID-19 was leaked from a lab in Communist China and negative news about Hunter Biden, the president’s son.