When the Supreme Court decided that the government should be allowed to continue telling social media platforms which individuals and viewpoints to censor in its initial approach to Murthy v Missouri, that was already bad news.

If the government can tell companies whom to censor, then what is the First Amendment even for beyond restricting the final step where the government comes to your house and locks you up?

The rest of the bad news on Murthy v Missouri was delivered by Justice Amy Coney Barrett (whom the Left has suddenly grown fond of after her Second Amendment move and now this latest decision) arguing that people who have been censored by government have no standing to sue the government because they can’t prove that the government is still behind their ongoing censorship.

The decision closely echoes the various ‘standing’ rulings that allowed the 2020 election rule changes to go forward.

The Murthy v Missouri decision is pathetic and dishonest. Faced with clear evidence that the government had arranged to censor individuals and viewpoints, Justice Amy Coney Barrett’s response was to lead a majority of the court’s leftists in mocking those who sued as idiots because the injury inflicted on them can’t be redressed since it already happened and because the social media platforms are still continuing to censor them even without direct government intervention.

This is the equivalent of “You can’t sue the government for blowing up your house because it already happened and since it failed to reappear, clearly its non-existence could never be attributed to government action.”

To issue her warping ruling, Justice Barrett had to argue that it’s unlikely the government would ever censor social media again.

“It is a bedrock principle that a federal court cannot redress “injury that results from the independent action of some third party not before the court.” Second, because the plaintiffs request forward-looking relief, they must face “a real and immediate threat of repeated injury.” Putting these requirements together, the plaintiffs must show a substantial risk that, in the near future, at least one platform will restrict the speech of at least one plaintiff in response to the actions of at least one Government defendant.”

And what are the odds of that?

“To obtain forward-looking relief, the plaintiffs must establish a substantial risk of future injury that is traceable to the Government
defendants and likely to be redressed by an injunction against them. The plaintiffs who have not pointed to any past restrictions likely traceable to the Government defendants (i.e., everyone other than Hines) are ill suited to the task of establishing their standing to seek forward-looking relief. But even Hines, with her superior showing on past harm, has not shown enough to demonstrate likely future harm at the hands of these defendants. On this record, it appears that the frequent, intense communications that took place in 2021 between the Government defendants and the platforms had considerably subsided by 2022, when Hines filed suit. Thus it is “no more than conjecture” to assume that Hines will be subject to Government-induced content moderation.”

If there’s anything we know from history, it’s that there’s no way the government would commit the same abuses a year from now that it did a few years ago.

And therefore there’s no standing based on mere conjecture.