The Orwellian Impact of Recent Court Rulings on Social Media Outreach, Affirmative Action And LGTBQ+ Rights

The Louisiana U.S. District judge who banned the government from engaging with social media companies to address misinformation, labeled the Biden administration’s actions as befitting an “Orwellian Ministry of Truth.” The far-reaching injunction against government departments and individuals against engaging with social media companies around disinformation, while providing free rein to individuals (and bots and foreign governments) to spread falsehoods, is in fact a looking-glass-world version of “1984” – completely at odds with George Orwell’s writings. 

Orwell does belong in the conversation. The recent cases against Harvard and the University of North Carolina on race-based affirmative action, and the right not to serve LGBTQ+ people decided by the Supreme Court are, in fact, outstanding examples of doublespeak rulings. In the majority opinion against Harvard, Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts argued that the court was, in essence, eliminating racial discrimination with no recognition that by using the narrowest of definitions of the 14th Amendment, that go against precedent, its outcome will be the opposite. And, with no sense of irony, SCOTUS proceeded to carve out a way to discriminate against the LGBTQ+ community.      

Orwell, no doubt, would be uncomfortable that “Orwellian” is the most used literary shorthand to describe events from Russia’s Ukraine propaganda to the right’s branding of the Biden administration.  

With the politicization of the courts and the fat finger of ideology on the scales of justice, the expectation that decision-making should reflect the genuine interests of all parties feels hopelessly idealistic. 

In essence, the Louisiana court is ruling that the government – the Biden administration at least – does not have the right to address the spread of disinformation, while individuals have unfettered rights to do so – under the banner of the First Amendment. 

As vice president of the Foreign Press Association, I am deeply aware of the importance of free speech, but within reason. As journalists and writers, we know that freedom comes with responsibility – to share what is (as far as possible) known to be true based on facts, or risk legal action.   

Lies are harmful. Those promoting the drinking of bleach and other dangerous quackery during COVID-19, killed people. Lies about election fraud led to the January 6th insurrection and jail for many duped by the big lie. And, while there are those who still argue that the government or vaccine was the problem not the cure, and that the election was rigged, the facts tell a different story. 

Reasonable people can agree to differ and should try to understand other perspectives. The freedom of speech is the freedom to express dissenting perspective, not one side’s perspective. We can - and indeed should be - skeptical of the government, but with this denial of elected representatives and government officials’ speech, we have to ask - have the lunatics taken over the asylum?

Having spent part of the July 4th weekend at West Point, one of the points shared with visitors was that the army has, for decades, selected officer cadets from backgrounds that are reflective of the people they will lead. As a result, we were proudly advised that more than 40% of the 2027 graduating class are from a diverse range of backgrounds. Is this inclusion or discrimination? Under Roberts’ narrow definition this is discrimination. At a state-level, where laws similar to the SCOTUS decision have been in force, the result has been enrollments in universities is less diverse, creating more discrimination.

The Supreme Court decisions open up new questions, including whether or not legacy admissions are a form of discrimination that should also be prevented. And, in its ruling for the website developer who advocated against being forced to provide services to same-sex couples (a case according to CNN’s reporting based on a fiction), religious objections were the basis for the ability to discriminate against LGBTQ+ people. Another convoluted twist. 

As communicators focused on doing what’s right, do we have a clear sense of when free speech is protected or not protected, or when it is not OK to include? Not from these rulings. We are left in an Orwellian tangle – free speech is for those who agree with me, and it’s OK to discriminate against the discriminated, unless perhaps they are the sons and daughters of the powerful.  

In conversations with a friend with, more often than not, the opposite views to mine, we find agreement on three things: Courts should not be political, they should uphold the law or a reasonable interpretation of it, and decisions should be consistent. By almost any measure, as precedents are overturned, it feels as though judicial scales are out of balance. 

Are the courts on a path, as Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez recently stated, toward authoritarianism? While this may be overstated, it is not a claim without substance. What should be deeply concerning, straight from the pages of “1984” is that the road to dystopia is paved with the type of doublespeak that has judges facilitating actual discrimination in the name of ruling against it.