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The White House press secretary criticized the ruling on Wednesday that limits the contact of certain departments and agencies of the Joe Biden Administration with social media companies and commented that an appeal may be filed against it.
Jean-Pierre said the Justice Department is still reviewing a federal judge’s decision restricting administration officials from communicating with social media companies about “protected speech.”
A judge of the federal district of Louisiana on Tuesday restricted the interaction with social networks of several federal agencies such as the Department of Health, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), among others.
Communications on social networks for the FBI, the Justice Department and the State Department were also vetoed, as well as those of specific representatives of the federal government such as Jean-Pierre herself, the Secretary of Homeland Security, Alejandro Mayorkas, or the Secretary of Health. Xavier Becerra.
Specifically, the sentence 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 are also prohibited from sending emails, letters or text messages with the same objective or calling social networks for that purpose.
Judge Terry Doughty, appointed by former Republican President Donald Trump (2017-2021), thus partially justified the attorneys general of the states of Missouri and Louisiana and other private plaintiffs, who considered that the Administration had gone too far by pressuring social media to remove certain posts with alleged misinformation about the coronavirus, security during the elections and other issues.
“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 spokeswoman 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 federal government seemed to have assumed a role similar to that of the “Ministry of Truth”, the fictitious institution devised by George Orwell in his novel “1984”.
For Republican Senator Eric Schmitt, representative of the state of Missouri, the judge’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 of the press. , as he said on Twitter.
The Louisiana judge’s ruling is not a final decision on the lawsuit and can be appealed by the Biden administration. before the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit based in New Orleans.
With information from EFE
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