Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson made an unbelievable statement about the 1st amendment, saying: “hamstringing the government in significant ways, in the most important time periods.”
Jackson spoke to Benjamin Aguiñaga, the Louisiana Solicitor General, who, along with Missouri, filed a lawsuit against the federal government for its attempts to censor speech on social media platforms during the pandemic, supposedly for public health reasons.
Earlier, Jackson presented a hypothetical scenario where social media platforms allowed a dangerous trend to spread, encouraging children to jump out of windows at higher and higher heights. She questioned whether government authorities could urge social media platforms to remove the content that was inciting this problem. Aguiñaga suggested that the government could use its influence to counter the information but could not directly ask or force social media platforms to take down the content.
Jackson disagreed, stating that it was insufficient for the government to simply post its own speech. She argued that there were situations where the government should be able to encourage or mandate this type of censorship in the interest of public safety. Conservatives have expressed concerns about the White House’s calls for social media companies to suppress certain information, such as vaccine skepticism or political speech regarding election integrity.
