In this piece, Columbia University law professor Philip Hamburger argues that it is.
The Court dodged the substantive issues in Murthy v. Missouri by holding that the plaintiffs didn’t have standing to sue. Hamburger agrees with Justice Alito in dissent that the decision takes standing too far and leaves Americans without a remedy for abuses of federal power intended to silence views the government dislikes.
Here is Hamburger’s conclusion:
So, for multiple reasons, Murthy is probably the worst speech decision in American history. In the face of the most sweeping censorship in American history, the decision fails to recognize either the realities of the censorship or the constitutional barriers to it. In practical terms, the decision invites continuing federal censorship on social media platforms. It thereby nearly guarantees that yet another election cycle will be compromised by government censorship and condemns a hitherto free society to the specter of mental servitude.
Right. The Court has given the authoritarians the green light to continue pressuring private actors to censor unwanted information and arguments because the plaintiffs weren’t quite ideal in the minds of the majority of the justices. Very bad.