Meet the law firm of Dred, Roe and Murthy – arguably the worst in U.S. history.

The U.S. Supreme Court’s Dred Scott decision upheld the abomination of slavery. Roe v. Wade went out of its way to establish a right to abortion.

And on Wednesday the high court birthed another landmark abomination in Murthy v. Missouri, bizarrely preserving government censorship of American citizens.

Missouri and Louisiana, joined by five social media users, had sued the Biden administration (in what was originally called Missouri v. Biden) for colluding with, and coercing, Big Tech platforms to censor conservatives’ online posts – on the 2020 election, COVID-19 lockdowns, vaccine mandates, the Hunter Biden laptop and more.

In entering an injunction to stop the administration’s censorship collusion with Facebook, Twitter, etc. – pointedly on Independence Day last year – U.S. District Judge Terry Doughty wrote ominously, “If the allegations made by plaintiffs are true, the present case arguably involves the most massive attack against free speech in United States’ history.”

Indeed, the judge compared the Biden censorship enterprise to George Orwell’s haunting novel 1984, in which “Big Brother” government policed and punished thought and speech. The U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals later issued its own injunction against the government, which the Biden administration then appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court.

And now, led oddly enough by Trump-appointed Justice Amy Coney Barrett, the 6-3 majority in Murthy has dismissed the case because, it said, neither the states nor the five individuals had standing to sue.

Who, pray tell, would have standing to sue if not the victims?

Justice Samuel Alito, writing a deliciously devastating dissent, warned the Biden administration’s censorship is “blatantly unconstitutional, and the country may come to regret the Court’s failure to say so.”

Dismantling the rickety decision

Alito’s dissent dismantles the majority’s rickety decision piece by piece. Citing plaintiff Jill Hines, a conservative Louisiana healthcare activist that the high court majority admits “faced COVID–19-related restrictions on Facebook,” Alito writes:

“Hines and the other plaintiffs in this case brought this suit and asked for an injunction to stop the censorship campaign just described. To maintain that suit, they needed to show that they (1) were imminently threatened with an injury in fact (2) that is traceable to the defendants and (3) that could be redressed by the court.”

This is where Alito’s methodical disassembling of the decision is most ruinous to the majority.

On the first of the three points above, Alito notes Hines “was still being censored when she sued – and that the censorship continued thereafter.”

Box 1 checked.

On point 2, Alito writes that “it was enough for her to show that one predictable effect of the officials’ action was that Facebook would modify its censorship policies in a way that affected her. Hines easily met that test … In short, when Hines sued in August 2022, there was still a link between the White House and the injuries she was presently suffering and could reasonably expect to suffer in the future (emphasis added).”

Alito adds that the administration’s censorship threats “did not come with expiration dates, and it would be silly to assume that the threats lost their force merely because White House officials opted not to renew them on a regular basis. Indeed, the record suggests that Facebook did not feel free to chart its own course when Hines sued; rather, the platform had promised to continue reporting to the White House and remain responsive to its concerns for as long as the officials requested.”

Boom. Box 2 checked.

As for point 3, the ability of the courts to redress this grievance – one of the people’s five rights in the First Amendment – Alito notes, “Hines easily satisfied that requirement. For the reasons just explained, there is ample proof that Hines’s past injuries were a ‘predictable effect’ of the Government’s censorship campaign, and the preliminary injunction was likely to prevent the continuation of the harm …”

All three boxes checked for the standing to sue, Alito argues.

Importantly, Alito also concisely highlights the actual harm caused to the state plaintiffs Missouri and Louisiana (and by extension all other states):

“This case involves what the District Court termed ‘a far-reaching and widespread censorship campaign’ conducted by high-ranking federal officials against Americans who expressed certain disfavored views about COVID–19 on social media. Victims of the campaign perceived by the lower courts brought this action to ensure that the Government did not continue to coerce social media platforms to suppress speech.

“Among these victims were two States, whose public health officials were hampered in their ability to share their expertise with state residents.”

The latter argument is incontrovertible, and yet wholly disregarded, by the majority in Murthy.

‘Mockery of First Amendment’

In short, the six justices actually had to go out of their way to reject the plaintiffs’ standing to sue, and tragically dismissed the landmark case out of hand – despite the unconstitutional censorship by the Biden administration already proven in the lower courts, the likes of which this country hasn’t seen since the revolution to throw off eerily similar tyranny by the Crown.

George Washington University law professor and self-avowed Obama voter Jonathan Turley decried the Supreme Court’s decision in posts on X and comments on cable news.

“You have one of the largest censorship systems in our history – if not the largest. It’s been called Orwellian by lower court judges. And what the court is saying is that ‘we won’t hear you on this issue because you’re not the right litigant.’

“Justice Alito speaks for many in the free speech community in writing in dissent ‘this is one of the most important free speech cases to reach this Court in years.’ The court just took an off ramp.”

Turley argued “the government is engaging in censorship by surrogate. I testified about this in Congress – that they have made a mockery of the limits of the First Amendment by doing indirectly what they’re barred from doing directly.

“This leaves free speech protections, for now, to the political system. This is why free speech should be the central issue in this presidential election.”

One simple question from a layman: How is it the Biden administration has the “standing” to censor Americans, but we don’t have the standing to stop it?

I reject that notion. In fact, it would be poetic justice to see the courts engulfed in a tidal wave of 10,000 lawsuits or 100,000 – dare I say “lawfare”? – by social media users whose posts have been de-emphasized or deleted, or who’ve been suspended or deplatformed for daring to challenge the Crown.

The question isn’t our standing. It’s how much we’ll stand for before we stand against it.