• The Supreme Court may agree to take up O’Handley v. Weber, which challenges Twitter’s partnership with California’s Secretary of State Elections Bureau cybersecurity to monitor “false or misleading” election information.
• Logan O’Handley, who asked the Supreme Court to reconsider his case on June 8, was allegedly censored and then suspended by Twitter after the California Department of Election Cybersecurity reported his account for postings about the 2020 election.
• The questions raised in Mr. O’Handley’s case are similar to those in the Free Speech Missouri v. Biden case. In this case, a federal judge’s recent injunction barring federal employees from communicating with social media platforms for the purpose of censoring protected speech was temporarily blocked by a Fifth Circuit court suspension.

The Supreme Court could hear a case challenging Twitter’s collaboration with California government agencies to censor election-related “misinformation.”

The O’Handley v. Weber case concerns California’s Secretary of State Elections Office Cyber ​​Security’s cooperation with Twitter to monitor “false or misleading” election information. appealed It will be submitted to the Supreme Court on June 8. case It raises questions similar to those posed in the Missouri v. Biden free speech lawsuit, now on appeal in the Fifth Circuit: Can the government legally induce private actors to censor protected speech?

The plaintiff is Logan O’Handley, a former entertainment lawyer and now a conservative political commentator, who is said to have been censored by Twitter after the California incident and subsequently had his account suspended. office The Elections Cybersecurity Division, established in 2018 to “monitor and combat false or misleading information about the election process” online, reported his account to a post calling for an audit of California ballots for “rampant” 2020 election fraud. according to in court documents. The 9th Circuit joined California in March. find The state “has a strong interest in expressing its views on the integrity of the electoral process.”

The Ninth Circuit found, “The fact that the country chose to counter perceived misinformation about the 2020 election by sharing its views directly on Twitter rather than speaking publicly does not weaken the right to speak or turn acceptable government speech into a questionable prejudice.”

One of O’Handley’s attorneys, American Liberty Center Associate Litigation Attorney Eric Sell, told the Daily Caller News Foundation, “I disagree with both the Ninth Circuit’s characterization of the facts and the court’s legal analysis of what is really happening here.”

“State officials crossed a constitutional line here, discriminating on the basis of status, and arguing that their speech should be more protected than that of civilians,” they wrote in their petition to the Supreme Court. “But the following courts gave states a free pass.”

Mr. O’Handley’s petition asks courts to consider two key questions: whether states can “establish institutions designed to single out speech unwilling to be censored by private corporations,” and whether they can “subsequently avoid First Amendment scrutiny simply by declaring that they are involved in their own government’s speech.” (Related: ‘Censorship opportunities’: Missouri AG hints at possible antitrust crackdown on Zuckerberg’s Threads app)

O’Handley v. Weber involves claims against the federal government, not the federal government like Missouri v. Biden, but these issues at hand are “very related,” Sell said.

“If the Supreme Court takes Mr O’Handley up, it could be a signpost to a lower court decision, or [become] There is precedent that the court will consider whether to decide to take Missouri v. Biden going forward,” Sell told DCNF.

Documents obtained through the Missouri v. Biden lawsuit reveal that a number of federal agencies were in contact with social media companies to induce them to censor certain views. Judge Terry A. Doughty of the Western District of Louisiana said the evidence presented “draws an almost dystopian scenario” showing that the government had assumed “a role akin to Orwell’s ‘Ministry of Truth'” during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Doughty’s July 4 injunction barring federal employees from communicating with social media platforms for the purpose of censoring protected speech was temporarily blocked last week by a Fifth Circuit suspension.

Sell ​​told the DCNF he was waiting to see if the Supreme Court would order California and Twitter to respond to the petition, but said the order could come after the court’s summer recess. Earlier this week, an Amicus dossier was filed in support of O’Handley by the Liberty Justice Center and the Buckeye Institute.

The Supreme Court has already agreed to file two other First Amendment- and social media-related cases, Garnier v. O’Connor-Ratcliffe and Lindke v. Freed, both of which are considering whether officials can block voters on social media.

“I think the courts are very concerned about these issues,” Sell said. “The First Amendment and Social Media [are] Very important. It is something that affects most people’s lives on a regular basis. ”

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