President Biden’s online censorship regime, derided by a federal judge as an Orwellian “Ministry of Truth,” is turning against the insurgent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. It raises the prospect of “the irreparable loss” of Mr. Kennedy’s “First Amendment rights,” warns Justice Samuel Alito. The justice dissented Monday when the Supreme Court declined Mr. Kennedy’s request to intervene in the litigation over the censorship. 

The dispute brought before the Supreme Court centers on “a ‘coordinated campaign’ by high-level federal officials,” Justice Alito explains, citing two lower courts, “to suppress the expression of disfavored views on social media platforms.” The censorship is all the more significant, the justice observes, because these platforms, like the town square of old, “now serve as the primary source of news about important public issues for many Americans.”

Mr. Kennedy has left the Democratic party to campaign as an Independent against Mr. Biden’s re-election. A federal district court found that the White House has been engaging in what appears to be a form of election interference. Administration officials, Justice Alito notes, “have asked social media platforms to block Mr. Kennedy’s efforts to communicate with the public,” the court found, and “the platforms have complied.”

This apparent attempt to kneecap Mr. Kennedy’s run for office marks a disturbing expansion of Mr. Biden’s efforts to stifle the expression of opposing viewpoints in the name of fighting so-called “misinformation.” Federal judges have already decried Mr. Biden’s efforts to silence critics of the administration’s Covid vaccine strategy, as well as still debate on issues like Hunter Biden’s laptop. Even gripes about inflation are being stifled, we’ve noted.

A United States district judge, Terry Doughty, calls it “the most massive attack against free speech in United States’ history.” Justice Alito grasps the stakes. “Our democratic form of government is undermined,” he writes, “if Government officials prevent a candidate for high office from communicating with voters.” He adds that it is “especially dangerous when the officials engaging in such conduct are answerable to a rival candidate.” 

Mr. Kennedy, for his part, calls the Biden anti-misinformation drive “a systematic, clandestine, and highly effective campaign” to evade First Amendment restrictions on the government by putting the squeeze on social media platforms. The idea, Mr. Kennedy explains in a court filing in Murthy v. Missouri,* is “to get these companies to do what the government itself cannot: censor protected speech on the basis of its content and viewpoint.”

Mr. Kennedy laments that he “has been singled out and targeted by the government’s censorship campaign,” in part for his activism on health matters — particularly his concerns over the safety of vaccines. It’s not our intention here to opine on the merit of such concerns. It is our intention to spotlight the constitutional questions that are being raised by the prospect of Americans’ right to free expression getting stifled by the federal leviathan. 

As a candidate for president, Mr. Kennedy is understandably exercised that, as he puts it, his communications with prospective voters, including “public speeches,” are “being censored by the same social media giants that the Federal Government has been working with, and pressuring, to bring about such censorship.” Justice Alito worries that the failure to give Mr. Kennedy standing in the censorship litigation will harm his run for the White House.

The Nine’s denial of the insurgent candidate’s request to intervene, Justice Alito explains, “is likely to prevent Mr. Kennedy from vindicating the rights he claims until the spring of 2024,” or as late as June, when “several months of the Presidential campaign will have passed.” The case could be delayed even further, the justice warns, leaving Mr. Kennedy to twist in the wind “until the District Court separately assesses his claims.”

Of Mr. Kennedy, Justice Alito avers “I would allow him to intervene,” both to “reach the merits” of his legal claims, and “to prevent the irreparable loss of his First Amendment rights.” The dissent is a reminder that it’s bad enough that Mr. Biden has been attempting to quash online public debate on matters of concern to voters. Silencing an opposing candidate is an even more blatant affront to the fairness of the 2024 election.

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*Previously captioned as Biden v. Missouri.