'Orwellian' Biden-era censorship reined in as red states celebrate 'historic' settlement

By Fox News · Fox News

Republican attorneys general are hailing a First Amendment victory in a censorship lawsuit against the Biden administration after two red states secured a settlement restricting federal government agencies from influencing social media companies’ moderation practices. Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill told Fox News Digital the settlement, a 10-year consent decree blocking several agencies from pressuring social media companies over their content, was "simply historic in nature." "Being able to set a precedent like this will help everybody in the future be able to show that this conduct is wrong," Murrill said in a phone interview. "It was Orwellian in nature from the beginning. It still is, and I'm grateful that the government is acknowledging that it shouldn't have been doing it." Missouri, Louisiana and several individual plaintiffs brought the high-profile jawboning lawsuit in 2022, alleging the Biden administration and officials in the first Trump administration inappropriately pressured social media companies to censor conservative viewpoints about COVID-19, election security and Hunter Biden 's laptop. FEDERAL JUDGE RULES PENTAGON POLICY RESTRICTING PRESS ACCESS UNCONSTITUTIONAL, HANDS VICTORY TO NEW YORK TIMES Under the settlement, the Office of the Surgeon General, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency are barred for the next decade from threatening or coercing social media companies to remove or suppress protected speech. The agreement also blocks officials from giving directions on or vetoing platforms' content moderation decisions. "This is the first real, operational restraint on the federal censorship machine," said Sen. Eric Schmitt, R-Mo., who brought the lawsuit when he served as his state's attorney general. "The deep state just got checked," Schmitt added. Murrill and now-U.S. Solicitor General John Sauer helped with the case when they were solicitors general of Louisiana and M…