United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit United States Court of Appeals Fifth Circuit

____________ FILED September 8, 2023 No. 23-30445 Lyle W. Cayce ____________ Clerk

State of Missouri; State of Louisiana; Aaron Kheriaty; Martin Kulldorff; Jim Hoft; Jayanta Bhattacharya; Jill Hines,

Plaintiffs—Appellees,

versus

Joseph R. Biden, Jr.; Vivek H. Murthy; Xavier Becerra; Department of Health & Human Services; Anthony Fauci; Et al.,

Defendants—Appellants. ______________________________

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Western District of Louisiana USDC No. 3:22-CV-1213 ______________________________

Before Clement, Elrod, and Willett, Circuit Judges. Per Curiam: A group of social-media users and two states allege that numerous federal officials coerced social-media platforms into censoring certain social- media content, in violation of the First Amendment. We agree, but only as to some of those officials. So, we AFFIRM in part, REVERSE in part, VACATE the injunction in part, and MODIFY the injunction in part. Case: 23-30445 Document: 00516889176 Page: 2 Date Filed: 09/08/2023

No. 23-30445

I. For the last few years—at least since the 2020 presidential transition—a group of federal officials has been in regular contact with nearly every major American social-media company about the spread of “misinformation” on their platforms. In their concern, those officials— hailing from the White House, the CDC, the FBI, and a few other agencies— urged the platforms to remove disfavored content and accounts from their sites. And, the platforms seemingly complied. They gave the officials access to an expedited reporting system, downgraded or removed flagged posts, and deplatformed users. The platforms also changed their internal policies to capture more flagged content and sent steady reports on their moderation activities to the officials. That went on through the COVID-19 pandemic, the 2022 congressional election, and continues to this day. Enter this lawsuit. The Plaintiffs—three doctors, a news website, a healthcare activist, and two states1—had posts and stories removed or downgraded by the platforms. Their content touched on a host of divisive topics like the COVID-19 lab-leak theory, pandemic lockdowns, vaccine side- effects, election fraud, and the Hunter Biden laptop story. The Plaintiffs maintain that although the platforms stifled their speech, the government officials were the ones pulling the strings—they “coerced, threatened, and pressured [the] social-media platforms to censor [them]” through private _____________________ 1 Specifically, the Plaintiffs are (1) Jayanta Bhattacharya and Martin Kulldorff, two epidemiologists who co-wrote the Great Barrington Declaration, an article criticizing COVID-19 lockdowns; (2) Jill Hines, an activist who spearheaded “Reopen Louisiana”; (3) Aaron Kheriaty, a psychiatrist who opposed lockdowns and vaccine mandates; (4) Jim Hoft, the owner of the Gateway Pundit, a once-deplatformed news site; and (5) Mis