Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/23pdf/23-411_3dq3.pdf
Page Number: 38.0

4 

MURTHY v. MISSOURI 

ALITO, J., dissenting 

record plainly shows.  For months in 2021 and 2022, a cote-
rie of officials at the highest levels of the Federal Govern-
ment continuously harried and implicitly threatened Face-
book  with  potentially  crippling  consequences  if  it  did  not 
comply with their wishes about the suppression of certain 
COVID–19-related speech.  Not surprisingly, Facebook re-
peatedly  yielded.    As  a  result  Hines  was  indisputably  in-
jured, and due to the officials’ continuing efforts, she was
threatened with more of the same when she brought suit. 
These past and threatened future injuries were caused by
and traceable to censorship that the officials coerced, and
the injunctive relief she sought was an available and suita-
ble remedy.  This evidence was more than sufficient to es-
tablish Hines’s standing to sue, see Lujan v.  Defenders of 
Wildlife, 504 U. S. 555, 561–562 (1992), and consequently, 
we are obligated to tackle the free speech issue that the case 
presents.  The Court, however, shirks that  duty and thus 
permits the successful campaign of coercion in this case to 
stand as an attractive model for future officials who want 
to control what the people say, hear, and think.

That  is  regrettable.  What  the  officials  did  in  this  case 
was more subtle than the ham-handed censorship found to
be  unconstitutional  in  Vullo,  but  it  was  no  less  coercive. 
And because of the perpetrators’ high positions, it was even 
more dangerous. It was blatantly unconstitutional, and the 
country  may  come  to  regret  the  Court’s  failure  to  say  so.
Officials who read today’s decision together with Vullo will 
get the message.  If a coercive campaign is carried out with
enough sophistication, it may get by.  That is not a message 
this Court should send. 

In the next section of this opinion, I will recount in some 
detail what was done by the officials in this case, but in con-
sidering the coercive impact of their conduct, two prominent 
facts must be kept in mind. 

First, social media have become a leading source of news