WATCH: Legal Expert Jonathan Turley SLAMS The Supreme Court's Decision On 'Orwellian' Social Media Censorship - 'Censorship Through Surrogate'

Following the Supreme Court's decision in Murthy v. Missouri, which allowed the White House, FBI, and other government agencies to pressure social media companies to remove "misinformation" and "disinformation," legal expert Jonathan Turley criticized the court for not taking up the case and instead ruling that the plaintiffs didn't have standing.

"This is one of the most fundamental issues that we are facing. I wrote about this issue, this case, in my most recent book because you have one of the largest censorship systems in our history, if not the largest. It's been called 'Orwellian' by lower court judges. And what the court is saying is that we won't hear you on this issue because you're not the right litigant," Turley explained, adding that he believes that the standing decision is too narrow. "They do prevent the court from rendering a decision on such important constitutional questions. So, this issue will have to wait for another day."

"One of the things that many of us have been arguing for years is that the government is engaging in censorship by surrogate," the law expert said. "I testified about this in Congress, that they have made a mockery of the limits of the First Amendment by doing indirectly what they're barred from doing directly. They're using academic and corporate allies to bar and cancel and blacklist critics on a variety of different subjects. So it is going to be very frustrating for the free speech community because we've been trying to see if there will be a final decision to strengthen free speech."

As previously reported by the DC Enquirer, Justice Amy Coney Barrett wrote the majority opinion that split 6-3 with Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, Brett Kavanaugh, and Ketanji Brown Jackson in the majority. The dissent, written by Justice Samuel Alito, was joined by Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch.

"During the 2020 election season and the COVID-19 pandemic, social-media platforms frequently removed, demoted, or fact-checked posts containing allegedly false or misleading information. At the same time, federal officials, concerned about the spread of 'misinformation' on social media, communicated extensively with the platforms about their content-moderation efforts," Justice Barrett wrote. "To establish standing, the plaintiffs must demonstrate a substantial risk that, in the near future, they will suffer an injury that is traceable to a Government defendant and redressable by the injunction they seek. Because no plaintiff has carried that burden, none has standing to seek a preliminary injunction."

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