Defining coercion at heart of Supreme Court case on government jawboning platforms

The report covers Supreme Court oral arguments in Murthy v. Missouri, examining whether federal officials’ communications with social media companies about misinformation crossed from permissible persuasion into unconstitutional coercion. Justices probed how regulatory leverage and persistent outreach might influence coercion claims, while expressing caution about overbroad limits that could hinder routine government-platform coordination on public health and national security. The piece notes that a lower-court injunction has already chilled such engagement, with agencies reportedly halting election-interference communications since mid-2023.