A federal judge in Louisiana ordered key Biden administration officials and agencies not to contact social media platforms to suppress speakers and viewpoints they disagree with, in a major development that pits free-speech rights against government efforts to curb misinformation.

The ruling came in a case filed by Louisiana and Missouri attorneys general, who had claimed that the Biden administration was trying to silence views and speakers who questioned its Covid policies and questioned the validity of the 2020 election.

US District Judge Terry A. Doughty in Monroe, Louisiana, said in the Tuesday ruling that large swaths of the government, including the Department of Health and Human Services and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, couldn’t talk to social media companies for “the purpose of urging, encouraging, pressuring, or inducing in any manner the removal, deletion, suppression, or reduction of content containing protected free speech.”

“The present case arguably involves the most massive attack against free speech in United States’ history,” Doughty wrote. “In their attempts to suppress alleged disinformation, the federal government, and particularly the defendants named here, are alleged to have blatantly ignored the First Amendment’s right to free speech.”

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