Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/23pdf/23-411_3dq3.pdf
Page Number: 36.0

2 

MURTHY v. MISSOURI 

ALITO, J., dissenting 

to  reach  this  Court  in  years.  Freedom  of  speech  serves 
many valuable purposes, but its most important role is pro-
tection of speech that is essential to democratic self-govern-
ment, see Snyder v. Phelps, 562 U. S. 443, 451–452 (2011),
and  speech  that  advances  humanity’s  store  of  knowledge, 
thought, and expression in fields such as science, medicine, 
history,  the  social  sciences,  philosophy,  and  the  arts,  see 
United States v. Alvarez, 567 U. S. 709, 751 (2012) (ALITO, 
J., dissenting).

The speech at issue falls squarely into those categories.
It  concerns  the  COVID–19  virus,  which  has  killed  more 
than a million Americans.1  Our country’s response to the 
COVID–19  pandemic  was  and  remains  a  matter  of  enor-
mous  medical,  social,  political,  geopolitical,  and  economic
importance,  and  our  dedication  to  a  free  marketplace  of
ideas demands that dissenting views on such matters be al-
lowed.  I  assume  that  a  fair  portion  of  what  social  media
users had to say about COVID–19 and the pandemic was of 
little lasting value.  Some was undoubtedly untrue or mis-
leading,  and  some  may  have  been  downright  dangerous. 
But  we  now  know  that  valuable  speech  was  also  sup-
pressed.2  That is what inevitably happens when entry to 

—————— 

1 Centers  for  Disease  Control  and  Prevention,  Deaths  by  Week  and 
State,  https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/COVID19/index.htm  (last  ac-
cessed June 21, 2024). 

2 This  includes  information  about  the  origin  of  the  COVID–19  virus. 
When the pandemic began, Facebook began demoting posts supporting 
the  theory  that  the  virus  leaked  from  a  laboratory.    See  Interim  Staff 
Report  of  the  House  Judiciary  Committee,  The  Censorship-Industrial 
Complex:  How  Top  Biden  White  House  Officials  Coerced  Big  Tech  To
Censor  Americans,  True  Information,  and  Critics  of  the  Biden  Admin-
istration,  p.  398  (May  1,  2024)  (Committee  Report),  https://judiciary. 
house.gov/sites/evo-subsites/republicans-judiciary.house.gov/files/evo-media-
document/Censorship-Industrial-Complex-WH-Report_Appendix.pdf.  “In 
February 2021, in response to . . . tense conversations with the new Ad-
ministration,” Facebook changed its policy to instead remove posts about
the lab leak theory wholesale.  Ibid.; accord, id., at 463 (Facebook execu-
tive explained that the platform removed these posts “[b]ecause we were