Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/23pdf/23-411_3dq3.pdf
Page Number: 64

30 

MURTHY v. MISSOURI 

ALITO, J., dissenting 

The Government also defends the officials’ actions on the 
ground that “[t]he President and his senior aides are enti-
tled  to  speak  out  on  such  matters  of  pressing  public  con-
cern.”  Reply Brief 11.  According to the Government, the 
officials were simply using the President’s “bully pulpit” to
“inform, persuade, and protect the public.”  Brief for Peti-
tioners 5, 24. 

This  argument  introduces  a  new  understanding  of  the
term  “bully  pulpit,”  which  was  coined  by  President  Theo-
dore  Roosevelt  to  denote  a  President’s  excellent  (i.e., 
“bully” 25)  position  (i.e.,  his  “pulpit”)  to  persuade  the  pub-
lic.26  But Flaherty, Slavitt, and other officials who emailed
and telephoned Facebook were not speaking to the public 
from  a  figurative  pulpit.  On  the  contrary,  they  were  en-
gaged in a covert scheme of censorship that came to light 
only after the plaintiffs demanded their emails in discovery 
and  a  congressional  Committee  obtained  them  by  sub-
poena.  See  Committee  Report  1–2.    If  these  communica-
tions represented the exercise of the bully pulpit, then eve-
rything that top federal officials say behind closed doors to 
any private citizen must also represent the exercise of the
President’s bully pulpit.  That stretches the concept beyond 
the breaking point. 

In any event, the Government is hard-pressed to find any 
prior example of the use of the bully pulpit to threaten cen-
sorship  of  private  speech.  The  Government  cites  four  in-
stances in which past Presidents commented publicly about 
the performance of the media.  President Reagan lauded the
media for “tough reporting” on drugs.   Reagan Presidential 
Library  &  Museum,  Remarks  to  Media  Executives  at  a 

—————— 

25 Webster’s  International  Dictionary  of  the  English  Language  191 

(1902). 

26 See  D.  Goodwin,  The  Bully  Pulpit:  Theodore  Roosevelt,  William
Howard Taft, and the Golden Age of Journalism, pp. xi–xii (2013) (Good-
win).