Murthy v. Missouri Revisions: 6/26/24, 603 U.S. 43

Background

During 2020–2022 major social‑media platforms (Facebook/Meta, Twitter, YouTube) enacted and enforced COVID‑19 and election misinformation moderation policies (demotions, labels, removals, bans).
Federal actors (White House digital staff, Surgeon General, CDC, FBI, CISA) repeatedly communicated with platforms about misinformation, sometimes publicly criticizing platforms and suggesting policy changes.
Plaintiffs: two States (Missouri, Louisiana) and five individual users (three doctors, a news‑site owner, a health‑activist) sued dozens of Executive Branch officials and agencies, alleging government coercion or significant encouragement of platform moderation in violation of the First Amendment.
The district court preliminarily enjoined many defendants, finding likely coercion/significant encouragement; the Fifth Circuit affirmed in part (treating government pressure as turning private moderation into state action) and issued a broad injunction.
Supreme Court granted certiorari, stayed the injunction, and reversed the Fifth Circuit for lack of Article III standing — holding plaintiffs failed to show a concrete, imminent, traceable, and redressable risk of future censorship by platforms attributable to the named government defendants; the Court did not reach the merits.

Issues

Issue	Plaintiff's Argument	Defendant's Argument	Held
Article III standing to seek an injunction	Past platform censorship + ongoing government pressure make future, imminent censorship likely	Plaintiffs’ injuries are speculative; third‑party platform action breaks causation; no imminent threat	No — plaintiffs failed to show likely future injury traceable to defendants and redressable by injunction
Causation/traceability of past moderation to government communications	Government communications coerced or significantly encouraged platforms, causing plaintiffs’ prior restrictions	Platforms had independent incentives and often acted before or apart from government contacts; record lacks specific links	Insufficient causal showing for standing purposes; Court did not resolve merits on state‑action/coercion question
Right‑to‑listen (third‑party censorship standing)	Individuals and States have a First Amendment interest in receiving others’ social‑media speech and may sue over others’ censorship	Theory is overbroad; injury must be concrete and show a specific connection to speaker(s)	No — plaintiffs failed to identify concrete, particularized injuries or specific speakers/topics
Redressability of injunction against government	Enjoining officials will stop government‑tainted policies and thus reduce platform censorship	Platforms remain free to enforce policies they adopted independently; government pressure had waned by filing; injunction unlikely to change platform conduct	No — injunction against defendants unlikely to redress asserted future harms

Key Cases Cited

Raines v. Byrd, 521 U.S. 811 (1997) (Article III case‑or‑controversy and standing requirement)
Clapper v. Amnesty Int’l USA, 568 U.S. 398 (2013) (no standing for speculative chains of third‑party conduct)
Simon v. Eastern Ky. Welfare Rights Org., 426 U.S. 26 (1976) (federal courts cannot redress injury resulting from independent action of a third party)
O’Shea v. Littleton, 414 U.S. 488 (1974) (injunctive relief requires a real and immediate threat of repeated injury)
Department of Commerce v. New York, 588 U.S. 752 (2019) (third parties’ predictable reactions can support traceability when supported by evidence)
TransUnion LLC v. Ramirez, 594 U.S. 423 (2021) (standing is not dispensed in gross; plaintiffs must show standing for each claim/defendant)
Lujan v. Defenders of Wildlife, 504 U.S. 555 (1992) (standing elements: concreteness, particularization, traceability, redressability)
Los Angeles v. Lyons, 461 U.S. 95 (1983) (speculation insufficient to prove future injunctive relief standing)
Kleindienst v. Mandel, 408 U.S. 753 (1972) (right to receive requires a concrete connection to the speaker)
Bantam Books, Inc. v. Sullivan, 372 U.S. 58 (1963) (government may not coerce intermediaries to suppress speech)
Blum v. Yaretsky, 457 U.S. 991 (1982) (state‑action tests, including coercion/significant encouragement concepts)
Massachusetts v. EPA, 549 U.S. 497 (2007) (redressability standard and special solicitude discussion for States)
FDA v. Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine, 602 U.S. 367 (2023) (causation and redressability often interrelated)
National Rifle Ass’n v. Vullo, 602 U.S. 175 (2023) (government may not use third parties to accomplish what it is barred from doing directly)