US Opposes Fast Discovery in States' Social Media Suit

The Biden administration urged a court Friday not to grant expedited discovery to Missouri and Louisiana in their suit claiming the administration colluded with social media platforms to censor and suppress truthful information (see 2205050056). In its response at the U.S. District Court for Western Louisiana (case 3:22-cv-01213-TAD-KDM), the administration said it plans to file a motion to dismiss. Don't allow states to take discovery before defendants can respond to the complaint, it said. "The Court must first address whether it has jurisdiction before this matter may proceed at all. … Expedited discovery is rare, and is authorized only when a party shows that it has a pressing need.” States “make little effort to show that they will suffer irreparable harm (or in fact any harm) absent expedited discovery.” It would go against federal civil procedure rules to require the U.S. defendants "to respond to an unspecified number of interrogatories and document requests, and potentially prepare for depositions, on a compressed timeline,” it said. Missouri and Louisiana seek a "a sweeping preliminary injunction that would have the perverse effect of suppressing public officials’ speech on matters of public concern,” and multiple courts including the D.C. Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals dismissed similar claims “for lack of subject-matter jurisdiction,” the administration said. “Although social media companies have been taking action against what they have deemed to be misinformation for years -- since before this Administration began,” plaintiffs here and in other cases insist “that the actions they were subject to were attributable … to certain comments made by Government officials about the harms of misinformation.” But courts “uniformly dismissed those challenges, concluding that the plaintiffs lacked Article III standing because their allegations did not show that the challenged actions were caused by any Government actor rather than the independent judgments of social media companies.”