Washington.- The White House condemned this Wednesday the ruling that limits the contact of certain departments and agencies of the Joe Biden Administration with social media companies and noted that filing an appeal is not ruled out.
“We disagre. (…) The Department of Justice is reviewing it. He will evaluate her options,” presidential spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre said at her daily press briefing.
A Louisiana federal district judge on Tuesday restricted interaction with the platforms to the Department of Health, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), among other agencies.
The FBI, the Justice Department and the State Department were also vetoed, as well as specific representatives such as Jean-Pierre herself, the Secretary of Homeland Security, Alejandro Mayorkas, or the Secretary of Health, Xavier Becerra.
Specifically, it prohibits them from meeting with representatives of the networks to “urge, encourage, pressure or induce in any way the withdrawal, elimination, deletion or reduction of content” published in the exercise of freedom of expression.
All of them were also prohibited from sending them emails, letters or text messages for the same purpose, or calling them for that purpose as well.
Judge Terry Doughty, appointed by former Republican President Donald Trump (2017-2021), thus partially justified the state of Missouri and other private plaintiffs, who considered that the Administration had overreached by pressuring the networks to eliminate certain publications with alleged misinformation about the coronavirus, security during elections and other topics.
“Social networks have a critical responsibility to take action or take into account the effects that their platforms have on Americans, but they make independent decisions about the information they present,” the presidential spokesperson stressed at her press conference.
Jean-Pierre added that the Biden Administration will continue to “promote responsible action to protect public health and safety in the face of challenges such as a deadly pandemic or foreign attacks on the election.”
The magistrate had considered in his resolution that during the covid-19 pandemic the US federal government seemed to have assumed a role similar to that of the “Ministry of Truth”, the fictional institution devised by George Orwell in his novel “1984”.
For Republican Senator Eric Schmitt, representative of the state of Missouri, Tuesday’s decision was “a blow to censorship” and an “immense victory” for the First Amendment to the Constitution, which protects, among other things, freedom of expression and press, he said on Twitter.
