Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/23pdf/23-411_3dq3.pdf
Page Number: 54.0

20 

MURTHY v. MISSOURI 

ALITO, J., dissenting 

For  another,  Facebook  “increas[ed]  the  strength  of  [its]
demotions  for  COVID  and  vaccine-related  content  that 
third party fact checkers rate[d] as ‘Partly False’ or ‘Missing 
Context.’ ”  9 id., at 2701.  And Facebook “ma[de] it easier 
to  have  Pages/Groups/Accounts  demoted  for  sharing 
COVID and vaccine-related misinformation by . . . counting 
content removals” under Facebook’s COVID–19 policies “to-
wards their demotion threshold.”  Ibid.  Under this new pol-
icy, Facebook would now consider Hines’s “numerous” com-
munity  standards  violations,  4  id.,  at  1314,  when 
determining  whether  to  make  her  posts  less  accessible  to
other users.  So, for instance, when Hines received several 
citations  in  early  2023,  this  amendment  would  have  gov-
erned Facebook’s decision to “downgrad[e] the visibility of 
[her]  posts  in  Facebook’s  News  Feed  (thereby  limiting  its
reach to other users).”  78 id., at 25503.  The record here 
amply shows traceability.

The Court reaches the opposite conclusion by applying a
new and heightened standard.  The Court notes that Face-
book  began  censoring  COVID–19-related  misinformation 
before officials from the White House and the Surgeon Gen-
eral’s Office got involved.  Ante, at 20; see also Brief for Pe-
titioners  18.  And  in  the  Court’s  view,  that  fact  makes  it 
difficult  to  untangle  Government-caused  censorship  from
censorship that Facebook might have undertaken anyway.
See ante, at 20.  That may be so, but in the Department of 
Commerce census case, it also would have been difficult for 
New York to determine which noncitizen households failed 
to respond to the census because of a citizenship question 
and which had other reasons.  Nevertheless, the Court did 
not require New York to perform that essentially impossi-
ble operation because it was clear that a citizenship ques-
tion  would  dissuade  at  least  some  noncitizen  households 
from responding.  As we explained, “Article III ‘requires no 
more than de facto causality,’ ” so a showing that a citizen-
ship question affected some aliens sufficed.  Department of