[brasic]

It’s a blatantly illegal prior restraint on speech, completely at odds with the values the plaintiffs and judge claim to hold.

Free speech cuts both ways. If you’re pleased when a judge bans any and all communication among millions of citizens, you don’t actually value the first amendment, you’re just cheering a partisan victory.

[phpisthebest]

>>Free speech cuts both ways.

You have completely miss understood the purpose of the Constitution and the 1st amendment, the Constitution is the States and the People limiting the power and role of the federal government.

The 1st amendment DOES NOT bestow or grant the US Government any freedom of speech, in fact it specifically limits the US Governments freedom / power in many ways by baring it from actions and activities that curb the speech of the people of these united states.

To proclaim this ruling is "violating the rights of the government" is a complete and utter inversion of the how the constitution works, and the direction of power.

We the people...

[michaelmrose]

We are all "the people" even when acting in our official capacity as government employees. It also doesn't bestow shit. It says our rights are self evident and forbids the government, which includes the judiciary, from stomping on them.

[AbrahamParangi]

Yeah, no this just ain't so. You may in your personal devotion believe that Jesus Christ is Lord. If you say that in your private life, no problem. That's your freedom of speech and freedom of religion.

Now let's say you clock in to your job as Attorney General and you make it known that you think Christianity is the best and other religions are sad and misguided. Then we have a problem.

You have rights as an individual and you have official duties acting as the government but the government does not also receive your rights by proxy.

[michaelmrose]

You have a right to speak freely, duties you agree to abide by as an employee, laws you must follow, and an obligation to respect the constitution and the rights of citizens. The fact that you can't in your official capacity promote Jeebus means your conduct must not infringe on the rights of others not that you have no rights at all.

[AbrahamParangi]

It is that infringement of the rights of others which is the very issue at hand here! The government undertook actions which caused people to be unable to express their opinions.

That the government was "just expressing their opinion that's totally nonbinding except of course I can exert selective regulatory scrutiny if I feel like it" is not a get-out-of-jail-free card.

[michaelmrose]

The government notifying Facebook that someone posted content contrary to Facebook's TOS doesn't violate the rights of the person violating said TOS. You never had a right to post content that violates the TOS you agreed to in the first place.

You do have a right to share that same content on your own website and the government would have no right to make you take it down.

In no cases were people unable to express their opinions. They were unable to create posts or comments contrary to the terms of service of the site they were using to share said opinions. Much like neither of US may herein violate the terms of Hacker News.

[tdehnel]

You're really mixed up here. This is the text of the 1st Amendment:

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."

When a person who works for the government is acting in their official capacity, they are the government. In that case the 1st Amendment prohibits them from abridging a private citizen's freedom of speech.

When that same person is acting as a private citizen, they are protected from their speech being abridged by the government.

People at work in their government jobs, using government equipment and email addresses, with government signatures are 100% the government, not private citizens.

[michaelmrose]

They don't cease to be people nor to have rights. How did you think all those cases go where a government employee sues the government for infringing on your rights. Judge: Sorry you aren't a person again until you clock out neeeext!.

[tdehnel]

That is a logically different scenario from a government employee (acting in their official capacity) infringing the rights of a private citizen.

[curiousllama]

I mean, I don't agree with the top level comment here, but this isn't a reverse-free-speech issue. Courts are absolutely free to restrain what public officials can say.

E.g., a regulator cannot say "if you don't burn this book, we'll tax you out of existence" while a person could say "if you don't burn this book, I'll vote to have you taxed out of existence"

[brasic]

A narrowly tailored prohibition on specific speech aimed at specific government officials may be permissable in some cases. This injunction is carelessly worded to apply to millions of people and to preclude essentially all communications related to "protected free speech". The breadth and vagueness is specifically what I'm objecting to.

[shkkmo]

Did you read the injunction? it isn't vague at all. The injunction only prohibits actions which should be illegal in the first place.

Can you name a specific action that you think this injunction prohibits or potentially prohibits that you think should be allowed?

[ch4s3]

There's a 5 part test laid out by the 9th circuit in Gibson v. Office of Attorney Gen related to speech rights of government employees. The government has broad latitude to restrict the speech that occurs in the course of a government employee's job, SCOTUS laid this out in Garcetti v. Ceballos. Moreover, this is an injunction related to the pending trial, and while judges can sometimes be a bit too aggressive for my taste there seems to be a compelling reason here.

[chipsa]

You seem to be under a misapprehension of how free speech works for the government: it doesn't. The government has no rights. It has powers. People have rights, including the right to freedom of speech. If the government is barred from doing something directly, they can't then try to do it indirectly by telling a third party to do it for them.

[Manuel_D]

> If you’re pleased when a judge bans any and all communication among millions of citizens, you don’t actually value the first amendment, you’re just cheering a partisan victory.

Except, that's not what's happening? The judge ordered the government not to contact a handful of companies, because it was coercing them into censoring speech it didn't like. A restraining order on a harasser is not a violation of the first amendment. This ruling is like putting a restraining order on an executive branch that was harassing companies into censoring speech.

[meragrin_]

> If you’re pleased when a judge bans any and all communication among millions of citizens, you don’t actually value the first amendment, you’re just cheering a partisan victory.

What? You seem very misinformed. Here's the ruling:

https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.lawd.18...

[1MachineElf]

It is very strange that this PDF omits pages 2-4. The full list of prohibited activities, plus additional context, was given on the Reason article posted here in Tuesday:

https://reason.com/volokh/2023/07/04/july-4-injunction-bars-...

[brasic]

I linked that in my original comment in this thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36616058

[meragrin_]

Perhaps read(or reread) it? There is literally nothing in there which "bans any and all communication among millions of citizens".

[brasic]

The targets of the injunction are the following agencies. The wording makes clear that all members of said agencies are in scope of the injunction:

HHS: 80,000

NIAID: 18,000

CDC: 11,000

Census Bureau: 5,000

FBI: 40,000 (double counted under DOJ)

DOJ: 115,000

CISA: 3000

DHS: 260,000

State Department: 14,000

Among the actions prohibited are communicating with "social media companies", defined in the injunction as including:

"Facebook/Meta, Twitter, YouTube/Google, WhatsApp, Instagram, WeChat,TikTok, Sina Weibo, QQ, Telegram, Snapchat, Kuaishou, Qzone, Pinterest, Reddit, LinkedIn, Quora, Discord, Twitch, Tumblr, Mastodon, and like companies."

That list, especially given the "like companies" part, includes easily several million people.

Also "Election Integrity Partnership, the Virality Project, the Stanford Internet Observatory, or any like project or group".

What makes a group "like" those orgs?

The prohibited topics and purposes of communication are incredibly vague, basically anything contrary to "protected free speech", which has no definition in the injunction and is famously tricky to define in US law.

This amounts to a blanket ban from where I'm sitting.

If I were a low level staffer at DHS this would arguably prohibit me from expressing opinions on this matter to a friend or spouse working at a social media company, for fear of, for example, "encouraging reduction of content posted with social-media companies containing protected free speech". The fact that that example is silly is precisely my point. Injunctions must be narrowly tailored to address the specific conduct at issue. This is so broad as to make a joke of the process and in doing so harms the free speech and rule of law that are at issue in this case.

[1MachineElf]

It's really strange that the PDF you've linked to omits pages 2-4. Half of the list of prohibited activities, as well as some context, are missing from it.

Try the Reason article posted earlier: https://reason.com/volokh/2023/07/04/july-4-injunction-bars-...

Given your example of a DHS staffer expressing opinions to a friend or family members who is employed at a social media company, there are many regulated industries like government and social media, where employees must disclose conflicts of interest. If rules reflecting this injunction were to be adopted, then disclosing relationships with social media employees would be quite reasonable. DHS staffers, who already go through extensive background checks, would not be significantly more burdened by this than any of the other disclosures that are already required.

>CISA: 3000

Glad you mentioned them, as their history of partisan censorship is well documented: https://web.archive.org/web/20230318074435/https://report.fo...

[shkkmo]

> The prohibited topics and purposes of communication are incredibly vague, basically anything contrary to "protected free speech", which has no definition in the injunction and is famously tricky to define in US law.

By "incredibly vague" you mean "specified with a detailed 10 point list over 1.5 pages with an additional page of specific exclusions"

[engineer_22]

Thanks! Good discussion follows this comment, thank you :)