Murthy v. Missouri, Jawboning, and How What the Supreme Court Had to Say Could Bear on Cybersecurity and Online Speech

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Presented at ShmooCon 2025 by

Cathy Gellis

In 2024, the Supreme Court considered a few cases involving “jawboning,” or the unconstitutional efforts by the government to affect what speech can appear online by pressuring the Internet platforms facilitating it. One such case was Murthy v. Missouri, where plaintiffs had challenged as unconstitutional censorship all sorts of Biden Administration communications–including those of CISA–with major social media platforms about potential harms manifest in the user expression on their systems. In its decision however, the Supreme Court largely rejected their claims…at least for now. But although the decision was generally, and deservedly, a loss for the plaintiffs, who were attempting to use their lawsuit to cause their own censorial harm, the case itself and the issues it raised will still linger beyond it. This presentation discusses those issues, why they are important for online expression even if not prevailing here, and what might follow from the decision when it comes to the government sharing information and expertise with private platforms, including about cybersecurity threats, and especially as we head into a new administration that may have different things to say than the last.