Trump just settled Biden-era social media censorship case. Here's why

Three federal agencies will be barred from coercing social media companies to censor speech under a settlement brokered by the Trump administration.

The agreement puts an end to a long-running lawsuit brought by Missouri, Louisiana and several social media users during Joe Biden’s presidency, alleging that the Democratic administration unlawfully threatened social media platforms to take down or suppress posts on COVID-19 and the 2020 presidential election, among other controversial issues.

The Surgeon General's office, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency are banned for 10 years from wielding legal, regulatory or economic pressure to persuade the platforms to remove protected speech.

The settlement comes nearly two years after the Supreme Court reversed a lower court finding that federal officials had likely violated free speech protections and rejected putting limits on how the Biden administration communicated with social media platforms.

“The Biden administration coerced social media companies to stifle free speech that they disapproved of,” Attorney General Pam Bondi said on the social media platform X. 

The Justice Department settlement “is a key step in undoing those abuses of the First Amendment, especially against conservative media,” she wrote.

President Donald Trump issued an executive order in January condemning the federal government’s actions under Biden that he said, “infringed on the constitutionally protected speech rights of American citizens across the United States in a manner that advanced the government’s preferred narrative about significant matters of public debate.”

In 2022, the Republican attorneys general of Louisiana and Missouri and a small number of social media users filed a lawsuit accusing the Biden administration of crossing the line by pressuring social media platforms to suppress content they believed was false and dangerous, such as posts on COVID-19 and election fraud.

At issue was “jawboning,” the practice of trying to influence social media companies to delete a controversial post or change policies around public health misinformation.

Missouri and Louisiana claimed those attempts violated the First Amendment. Among the communications were tense conversations about the coronavirus vaccine that the Biden administration had with Facebook’s parent company Meta and X, formerly Twitter.

The lawsuit was one in a series of conservative grievances that Big Tech colluded with Democrats to stifle Republican views.  

At the time, conservatives alleged that social media platforms violated their First Amendment rights when their posts were labeled or removed or when they were banned for violating company policies. Social media companies argued they didn't target conservatives, only harmful speech that violates their rules.

Political commentator Dan Schnur told USA TODAY in 2024 that social media censorship would remain a mainstream powder keg unless Trump won reelection and reversed the federal government’s position.

“There are certainly conservatives who will continue to fight on principle but under a Trump administration, a lot of them would probably find other battles to weigh in on,” Schnur, who teaches at the University of California, Berkeley’s Institute of Governmental Studies and the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School of Communications, said at the time.