The Supreme Court could hear a case questioning a California agency’s coordination with Twitter to censor election-related “misinformation.”
O’Handley v. Weber, which concerns the California Secretary of State’s Office of Election Cybersecurity’s work with Twitter to monitor “false or misleading” election information, was appealed to the Supreme Court on June 8. The case raises questions similar to those posed in the free speech lawsuit Missouri v. Biden, now being appealed in the Fifth Circuit: Can the government lawfully induce private actors to censor protected speech?
The plaintiff, former entertainment lawyer and current conservative political commentator Rogan O’Handley, was allegedly censored and later suspended by Twitter after California’s Office of Election Cybersecurity, created in 2018 to “monitor and counteract false or misleading information regarding the electoral process” online, flagged his account over a post calling for an audit of California ballots due to “rampant” 2020 election fraud, according to court documents. The Ninth Circuit sided with California in March, finding the state “has a strong interest in expressing its views on the integrity of its electoral process.”