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A federal judge slammed President Joe Biden’s Justice Department for trying to force his hand in a major immigration case.
District Judge Drew Tipton, who was appointed by former President Donald Trump, issued an injunction last year saying that Biden’s administration couldn’t use any of the new immigration rules it implemented when Biden took office. Tipton gave the DOJ a deadline to make an appeal of his ruling to a higher court before forcing the Biden administration to play by Trump’s rules.
Tipton smacked down the Biden administration again by ruling against the DOJ’s motion to transfer the immigration policy case to a different court, adding that the administration’s claim that the Republican-led states that sued had engaged in “judge shopping” that would erode public faith in the courts,” Reuters reported.
“The Court does not believe it is appropriate to transfer a case that is in the proper venue due to a speculative public perception of bias that conflicts with the federal defendants’ own statements,” Tipton wrote.
But prior to that, Tipton told Adam Kirschner, a DOJ attorney, that he was not happy with the department for trying to force his hand, Politico reported.
Tipton was furious after the DOJ seemingly threatened that it would seek emergency relief from an appeals court if Tipton had not acted on a request to stay last week’s injunction.
“Whose idea was it to impose a deadline on the court?” Tipton asked.
“This is the view of the United States,” Kirschner said. “I can’t speak to internal deliberations. It shows the urgency that we have and the great irreparable harm posed by the injunction.”
“Whose idea was it?” he said. “Were you involved in it?”
This is the second time a judge has torn into the Biden administration.
Last week, a federal judge ordered the government to disclose its communications with big tech companies in an effort to gain a clearer understanding of the nature of their interactions.
Judge Terry Doughty of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Louisiana has rejected the Biden administration’s request to dismiss a significant case alleging collusion between the federal government and Big Tech companies to censor particular users with regard to COVID-19.
In Missouri v. Biden, Louisiana and Missouri have brought a lawsuit against social media companies, including Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and LinkedIn, alleging these platforms censored specific viewpoints and users under the direction of members of President Joe Biden’s administration and leaders at various federal government agencies.
“The Court finds that the Complaint alleges significant encouragement and coercion that converts the otherwise private conduct of censorship on social media platforms into state action, and is unpersuaded by Defendants’ arguments to the contrary,” Doughty wrote in his ruling.
Doughty said he was “unpersuaded” by some of the government’s arguments in court, particularly their attempts to downplay coercive threats as “isolated episodes in which federal officials engaged in rhetoric about misinformation on social media platforms.”
“Further, while the Government may certainly select the messages it wishes to convey, this freedom is limited by the more fundamental principle that a government entity may not employ threats to limit the free speech of private citizens,” Doughty wrote.
“In the lawsuit, the states argue that the government’s alleged encouragement of Big Tech companies to engage in censorship exceeds its legal authority, violates the Administrative Procedure Act (APA), and infringes First Amendment rights. The government filed a motion to dismiss the case claiming a lack of subject-matter jurisdiction and failure to state a claim upon which relief can be granted,” The Epoch Times reported.
Doughty disagreed, however, and wrote that the states had “plausibly alleged state action under the theories of joint participation, entwinement, and the combining of factors such as subsidization, authorization, and encouragement.”
“Plaintiffs have clearly and plausibly alleged that Defendants engaged in viewpoint discrimination and prior restraints,” he noted further.
“If private speech could be passed off as government speech by simply affixing a government seal of approval, the government could silence or muffle the expression of disfavored viewpoints,” the ruling says.
“The Complaint alleges more than the exercise of permissible government speech. It alleges extensive and highly effective efforts by government officials to ‘silence or muffle the expression of disfavored viewpoints,’” the judge wrote. “Accordingly, the Court finds that Plaintiffs have plausibly alleged state action under the theory of significant encouragement and/or coercion.”
A federal court in Louisiana has denied the Biden administration’s motion to dismiss a landmark case alleging collusion between the federal government and #BigTech to #censor disfavored users and viewpoints related to #COVID19. https://t.co/jX6BppCAaR
— NTD News (@NTDNews) March 21, 2023
Good news for free speech as judge denies Biden admin's effort to dismiss case on censorship collusion between gov't and Big Tech.https://t.co/nfzgMBmZDr https://t.co/hru03LIya0
— Evan Swarztrauber (@SayreEvan) March 21, 2023
According to the lawsuit, the social media companies in question allegedly violated the First Amendment by labeling certain information as “misinformation” and “disinformation.” Furthermore, the federal government overstepped its bounds, with the Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of Homeland Security violating the Administrative Procedure Act, the states argued further.
“After the AGs filed a motion for expedited preliminary injunction-related discovery, the Biden administration filed an opposition. The Biden administration argued Louisiana and Missouri don’t have the authority to bring a parens patria suit – an action to protect citizens unable to protect themselves – against the federal government,” the report said.
“The administration argued the states can’t meet an ‘injury in fact’ standard, defined as ‘it suffered ‘an invasion of a legally protected interest’ that is ‘concrete,’ ‘particularized,’ and ‘actual or imminent, not conjectural or hypothetical.’” The administration contended there wasn’t a link between alleged injuries to the states and the government’s alleged actions and argued the states can’t demonstrate how the court will provide justice for an alleged ‘injury in fact,’” it said.
