SCOTUS Grants Government’s Application for Full Stay of Social Media Injunction

The U.S. Supreme Court late Friday afternoon granted the government’s application for a full stay of the injunction that bars officials from the White House, the surgeon general’s office, the FBI, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency from coercing or significantly encouraging social media companies to moderate their content.

SCOTUS issued the docketing statement (docket 23-411) just as the administrative stay imposed by Justice Samuel Alito was about to expire at 5 p.m. EDT. Alito is the circuit judge for the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, where the injunction was modified Oct. 3.

SCOTUS also granted the government’s request to expedite the appeal by construing the stay application as a cert petition, and it granted that petition. Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch joined Alito in dissenting from the grant of the stay application, said a text-only entry in docket 23-411. The full stay will terminate with the court’s resolution of the cert petition, said the docketing statement.