DOJ Attorney: Twitter Appellants’ Censorship Harms Not ‘Redressable’ via Injunction
The censorship harms that three Twitter user appellants allege against Health and Human Services officials in Changizi v. HHS (docket 22-3573) aren’t “redressable” through the “very broadly worded injunction” they seek to thwart the officials from pressuring Twitter to ramp up its misinformation enforcement, DOJ attorney Daniel Winik told a 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals panel in oral argument Thursday (see 2306150049).
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The appellants allege the senior HHS officials, including HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra and Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, coerced Twitter into suspending their accounts and censoring their content for spreading COVID-19 misinformation in their tweets. They seek to reverse the district court’s dismissal of their complaint for lack of jurisdiction and failure to state a claim, arguing the lower court erroneously concluded the plaintiffs lacked standing because they suffered no concrete harm.
There are "lots of broader problems” with the injunction the appellants seek against the government, Winik told the 6th Circuit. “The theory that an injunction like that could redress some injury they have suffered, when Twitter has already stopped enforcing any COVID misinformation policy at all, I think is yet another reason to hold that there’s no jurisdiction over this suit,” he said.
From "the face of the complaint,” Twitter’s action to step up its COVID-19 misinformation enforcement “was voluntary, was independent of the government,” said Winik. HHS officials “didn’t cause the injuries plaintiffs are complaining about,” and their claims aren’t redressable through an injunction against the government, he said.
Before and after any such injunction, "Twitter’s going to act as it wants to do, and it’s going to set the policy it wants to set,” said Winik. “That is the reason I keep mentioning the fact that they are not enforcing any COVID misinformation policy today,” he said. “I think it highlights better than anything the fact that Twitter is not acting under coercion from the government,” he said. “It was independently setting its policy on these subjects.”