DOJ Renews Plea for SCOTUS to Stay Social Media Injunction Pending Cert Petition

The government returned to the U.S. Supreme Court Thursday with a renewed plea for the court to grant its emergency application for a full stay of the injunction barring officials from the White House, the surgeon general’s office, the FBI, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention -- and now extended to the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency -- from coercing or significantly encouraging social media companies to moderate their content.

The government wants the stay to remain in effect “pending the timely filing and disposition” of its cert petition to vacate the injunction entirely, said its third supplemental memorandum in support of the emergency application (docket 23A243). But it didn’t commit to filing the cert petition by Oct. 13, as it did in its filing before the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals decision on rehearing Tuesday expanding the injunction to include CISA officials.

In light of the 5th Circuit’s Tuesday grant of a 10-day administrative stay of the injunction through Oct. 13, the government asks that SCOTUS extend that administrative stay if it hasn’t acted on the emergency application by that date, said Thursday’s memorandum, without proposing how long that extended administrative stay should last.