JC SAYS ITS A MAJOR WIN ( CONTRARTY TO THE REPORTS YESTERDAY)

The New York Times ran a delicious story yesterday headlined, “Appeals Court Rules White House Overstepped 1st Amendment on Social Media.” “Overstepped” is a bit understated.

The story referred to the case of Missouri v. Biden. In what the Times goofily called “a victory for conservatives,” rather than for all Americans, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a lower court injunction banning the White House, CDC, and FBI from influencing social media companies to remove so-called “disinformation.”

In the delightful 75-page order, the judges opined that the White House and its Surgeon General had “coerced the platforms to make their moderation decisions by way of intimidating messages and threats of adverse consequences” and “significantly encouraged the platforms’ decisions by commandeering their decision-making processes.”

The appellate court also found that the FBI had illegally coerced the companies, which had taken down 50% of the online material that the bureau’s agents flagged as problematic. “Given the record before us, we cannot say that the F.B.I’s messages were plainly threatening in tone or manner,” the judges wrote. But “we do find the F.B.I’s requests came with the backing of clear authority over the platforms.”

It’s not an exaggeration to say this case is probably the most important civil rights case in our lifetimes. This ruling is terrific news. To give you some inside baseball about how good it was, I’ll explain some injunction law.

There are four main elements that a party must prove to get an injunction. Three of them are tough. One of the tough ones is that the party must show a “substantial likelihood of prevailing on the merits.” In simpler words, that means the party seeking the injunction has to convince the court it will probably win the whole case.

So when a court grants an injunction, it must also find that, at this point, it looks like the party is probably going to win. It’s like an early trial, a preview of the court’s final decision, a trial-before-the-trial. The party that wins the injunction then has a huge, permanent advantage in the case.

So the fact that in Missouri v. Biden, the trial court and now the appellate court have both agreed on the injunction, things are looking very bad for the government and its censorship machine. Which explains why the New York Times finally reported on the case.

According to the story, the White House “is considering” appealing to the Supreme Court, and I hope they do. But I would be very surprised if that happens, because we all know the Supreme Court is probably dying to weigh in on this issue.

Major progress.