Murthy v. Missouri
The Supreme Court paused a lower-court order that had barred federal officials from pressuring social media platforms to remove or suppress posts on topics like COVID-19 vaccines, election fraud, and the Hunter Biden laptop story.
The stay — issued without any explanation from the majority — halts the injunction while the Court takes up the underlying case, which asks whether the government ran an unconstitutional campaign to censor speech it disfavored.
How it got here: A federal district court in Louisiana issued a preliminary injunction on July 4, 2023; the Fifth Circuit modified and largely upheld it on October 3, 2023; the federal government then applied to the Supreme Court for an emergency stay.
The Case in Depth
What happened
The states of Missouri and Louisiana, joined by individual social media users, sued top federal officials claiming the government orchestrated a coordinated campaign to pressure major social media platforms into removing or demoting posts on politically sensitive topics — including COVID-19's origins, pandemic lockdowns, vaccine side effects, election integrity, and the Hunter Biden laptop story. A federal district court issued an 82-page set of factual findings and enjoined specific officials from coercing or controlling those platforms' content decisions. The Fifth Circuit largely affirmed.
The question before the Court
Did federal officials run an unlawful campaign to pressure social media companies into silencing certain viewpoints, and should courts be allowed to block that conduct while the legal fight continues?
The Court's answer
The majority paused the lower courts' injunction without explaining its reasoning. The stay prevents the injunction from taking effect while the Supreme Court reviews the case, which the Court simultaneously agreed to hear on the merits.
Because the majority offered no written explanation, the only substantive legal analysis in this document comes from the dissent, which argued the stay should have been denied. The case now moves toward full briefing and argument, with a final ruling expected by the end of the Court's term.
Curious how the Court got there? See the step-by-step legal reasoning →
Why it matters
Federal officials who had been prohibited from leaning on social media companies to take down disfavored posts can resume those communications while the case is pending. Users whose posts were previously suppressed lose the protection of the injunction for now. The Court's agreement to hear the full case means a final ruling on government pressure and online speech is expected by late spring 2024.
What changes now
The injunction is suspended, so federal officials are no longer barred from the conduct the lower courts found problematic while the appeal proceeds. The Court also treated the stay application as a petition for full review and granted certiorari, meaning it will hear the merits of the case. A final ruling on whether the government violated the First Amendment by pressuring social media companies is expected by the end of the October Term 2023, likely in spring 2024.
What this does not decide
This order does not decide whether federal officials actually violated the First Amendment by pressuring social media companies. It only pauses the lower courts' injunction while the appeal proceeds. The Court will separately take up, and fully decide, the underlying free-speech question.
Concurrences and dissents
Dissent — Justice Alito
Justice Alito argued the majority was wrong to grant the stay because the government plainly failed to demonstrate the required likelihood of irreparable harm — offering only hypothetical future speech that might be chilled, not any concrete imminent injury. He stressed that the injunction already permitted government officials to speak freely on public matters; it only banned coercion and direct control of social media platforms. He would have denied the stay, cautioning that the majority's action risks signaling that the government may freely use heavy-handed pressure to shape online speech.
How the Court got there
The legal reasoning, step by step
- Emergency stays require the party seeking relief — here, the federal government — to make a 'clear showing' of likely irreparable harm if the stay is denied. A mere possibility of harm is not enough; the harm must be shown to be likely and imminent.
- The majority granted the stay without any written explanation, making it impossible to know which factors it weighed or how. The per curiam order runs to a single paragraph of procedural text.
- The dissent (authored by Justice Alito, joined by Justices Thomas and Gorsuch) argued the government had not come close to meeting the irreparable-harm standard. Rather than pointing to concrete, imminent injury, the government offered only hypothetical future communications that might — it speculated — be chilled by the injunction.
- The dissent further noted that the injunction, as written, did not prevent government officials from speaking publicly on any topic; it only barred them from crossing into coercion or direct control of social media platforms' editorial decisions.
- The dissent also argued the majority should not have lightly set aside the concurrent factual findings of two lower courts — findings that spanned 82 pages and described an unprecedented government pressure campaign — without any counter-explanation.