They claimed that the federal government pressured social media companies to censor conservative views and criticism of the Biden administration in violation of the right to freedom of expression.

Since around 2020, Missouri Attorney General (at the time) Eric Schmitt had been filing numerous lawsuits against the Biden administration, with a total of 26 suits as of October 2022.

"[1] Targets of Schmitt's lawsuits included the administration's policies on oil and gas production, Biden's planned debt forgiveness of student loans, and mask mandates during the COVID-19 pandemic.

[5] The Republican-controlled House of Representatives held a set of hearings in March 2023 about the Biden administration "weaponizing" social media for its own purposes.

[6][7] The lawsuit alleges that President Joe Biden and his administration were "working with social media giants such as Meta, Twitter, and YouTube to censor and suppress free speech, including truthful information, related to COVID-19, election integrity, and other topics, under the guise of combating 'misinformation'.

Additional plaintiffs were added several months later, including Jim Hoft, owner of The Gateway Pundit, a conservative publication,[9] and Jay Bhattacharya and Martin Kulldorff, academics who co-authored the Great Barrington Declaration, which questioned the government's handling of the COVID-19 pandemic.

[10] The plaintiffs obtained subpoenas in October and November 2022 from former and current members of the Biden administration, including Anthony Fauci, who served as Chief Medical Advisor to the President; Karine Jean-Pierre, who was the White House Press Secretary; and Kate Starbird, who served as an academic advisor to the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency.

"[15] He continued: "If the allegations made by plaintiffs are true, the present case arguably involves the most massive attack against free speech in United States' history.

[21] But the court also ruled that Doughty's preliminary injunction was too broad, as it blocked some legal social media content created by government, and narrowed the injunction to prevent the government from taking "actions, formal or informal, directly or indirectly, to coerce or significantly encourage social-media companies to remove, delete, suppress, or reduce, including through altering their algorithms, posted social-media content containing protected free speech.

That includes, but is not limited to, compelling the platforms to act, such as by intimating that some form of punishment will follow a failure to comply with any request, or supervising, directing, or otherwise meaningfully controlling the social-media companies' decision-making processes.

[24][25] The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals expanded the injunction issued in September to include the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), ruling that it used frequent interactions with social media platforms "to push them to adopt more restrictive policies on election-related speech".

Justice Amy Coney Barrett wrote the opinion, stating: "To establish standing, the plaintiffs must demonstrate a substantial risk that, in the near future, they will suffer an injury that is traceable to a government defendant and redressable by the injunction they seek.