Margot Cleveland writes for the Federalist about a significant legal development.
After more than two years of litigation, The Federalist successfully negotiated a deal with the State Department to end the lingering effects of the Global Engagement Center’s unconstitutional and ultra vires targeting of domestic media outlets and to ensure a future administration does not restart the censorship activities that flourished under the Biden Administration.
The Federalist and The Daily Wire filed suit against the State Department, its Global Engagement Center, and several officers and employees in December of 2023. The complaint filed by the New Civil Liberties Alliance, a public interest firm committed to fighting the administrative state, alleged violations of the plaintiffs’ First Amendment rights to freedom of speech and freedom of the press and also alleged the defendants exceeded their statutory authority, which was limited to foreign affairs.
Early Wednesday, attorneys representing The Federalist and The Daily Wire filed a Motion for Entry of a Consent Decree, along with a detailed Consent Decree which places significant limitations on the State Department’s ability to target speech — or fund tech companies which target speech — under the guise of fighting misinformation and disinformation. The Consent Decree includes an injunction that details activities that State Department, its employees, and its contractors, “shall take or not take .,,”
Among other things, the State Department and those acting on its behalf can no longer “request or recommend that third parties use electronic tools or technologies to knowingly or intentionally suppress, censor, demonetize, or downgrade constitutionally protected speech of Americans or domestic media outlets.” The State Department is also barred from funding, promoting, or assisting in the testing or development of so-called Countering Propaganda and Disinformation tools or technologies which seek to suppress, censor, demonetize, downgrade, or fact-check “the constitutionally protected speech of Americans or domestic media outlets.”
