• by Wendy Davis  @wendyndavis, October 25, 2024

Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey said he is investigating Google for allegedly suppressing right-wing speech.

“I am launching an investigation into Google for censoring conservative speech during the most consequential election in our nation’s history,” Bailey said late Thursday in a post on X, formerly Twitter.

“Google is waging war on the democratic process,” Bailey added.

He didn't point to any specific posts or search results that were allegedly censored by Google, or say what law he believes Google may have violated.

Google reportedly denied the claims.

His investigation could hit a constitutional roadblock, given that the Supreme Court suggested earlier this year that tech companies have a First Amendment right to wield editorial control over the content on their platforms.

The First Amendment “does not go on leave when social media are involved,” Justice Elena Kagan wrote in an opinion addressing laws in Florida and Texas that would have restricted platforms' ability to suppress speech.

“This Court has many times held, in many contexts, that it is no job for government to decide what counts as the right balance of private expression -- to 'un-bias' what it thinks biased, rather than to leave such judgments to speakers and their audiences,” she wrote. “That principle works for social-media platforms as it does for others.”

The Texas statute would have banned social media platforms with at least 50 million users from removing or suppressing lawful posts based on viewpoint, while the Florida law would have prohibited social media platforms from suppressing posts by news media based on content.

The Supreme Court ultimately said trial judges should take a closer look at both state laws, which were broad and had some ambiguities -- such as whether they would apply to services such as direct messaging, reviews on Etsy or payment platforms like Venmo.

Both of those state laws are currently on hold, pending further review.