Federal Government Enters 10-Year Consent Decree Barring Surgeon General, CDC and CISA from Pressuring Social Media to Censor Protected Speech

WASHINGTON – The Trump administration has reached a landmark consent decree and settlement in the long-running Missouri v. Biden lawsuit, formally ending the Biden administration’s alleged “whole-of-government” effort to coerce social media companies into suppressing constitutionally protected speech.

The agreement, filed March 24, 2026, in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Louisiana, prohibits the U.S. Surgeon General’s Office, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) from threatening social media platforms with legal, regulatory, or economic sanctions to force the removal, suppression, deplatforming, or algorithmic downgrading of lawful content. It also bars these agencies from directing or vetoing the companies’ content-moderation decisions.

The decree applies to Facebook, Instagram, X (formerly Twitter), LinkedIn, and YouTube. It explicitly states that labeling speech as “misinformation,” “disinformation,” or “malinformation” does not strip it of First Amendment protection. The binding order lasts 10 years and grants the plaintiffs — including the states of Missouri and Louisiana and individual plaintiffs represented by the New Civil Liberties Alliance (NCLA) — the right to enforce it in federal court if violated. The decree awaits final approval by U.S. District Judge Terry Doughty, who originally issued a sweeping preliminary injunction in the case.

The settlement resolves claims that Biden administration officials coordinated with major tech platforms to censor viewpoints on COVID-19 vaccines, pandemic policies, the 2020 presidential election, and the Hunter Biden laptop story. Discovery in the case revealed extensive communications between White House officials, CDC leaders, the Surgeon General, CISA, and social media executives, including requests to flag, throttle, or remove posts that contradicted official government narratives.

The lawsuit, originally filed in 2022 by Missouri and Louisiana attorneys general along with private plaintiffs such as Dr. Aaron Kheriaty and activist Jill Hines, alleged that federal officials crossed the line from permissible persuasion into unconstitutional coercion. A federal district court found the government “likely violated the First Amendment,” and the Fifth Circuit largely upheld that ruling before the Supreme Court in Murthy v. Missouri (2024) dismissed the case on standing grounds without reaching the merits.

The consent decree now codifies the Trump administration’s early executive action condemning the prior censorship regime. On his first day in office in January 2025, President Trump issued an order declaring that the previous administration had “trampled free speech rights by censoring Americans’ speech on online platforms, often by exerting substantial coercive pressure on third parties.”

NCLA Senior Litigation Counsel John Vecchione called the settlement a powerful vindication for free speech. “This case began with a suspicion that blossomed into fact,” he said. NCLA President Mark Chenoweth added: “Federal officials may police the line between lawful and unlawful speech, but they have no role in deciding if speech is true or false.”

Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey and Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill hailed the decree as a permanent check on future government overreach. The agreement also requires the enjoined agencies to notify all employees of its terms within 30 days of final approval.

Legal experts describe the consent decree as one of the most significant restraints ever placed on federal involvement in online speech. Because it is court-enforceable for a full decade and applies directly to the agencies most active in the original censorship efforts, it creates a durable barrier against any repeat of the Biden-era practices. It reinforces that the government cannot use private companies as proxies to achieve what the First Amendment forbids it from doing directly — deciding which viewpoints Americans may express on matters of public concern.

The settlement comes after years of litigation that exposed the scale of government-tech coordination and sets a precedent that could deter similar efforts by future administrations. It marks the formal end of what plaintiffs called the most expansive government censorship campaign in modern American history.