White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre and Dr. Anthony Fauci, chief medical adviser to the president, must turn over any emails they sent to social media companies about misinformation or the censorship of social media content within 21 days, a federal judge in Louisiana ruled, The Kansas City Star reported Wednesday.
The ruling is part of a lawsuit filed in May by Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt and Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry that accuses the Biden administration of collaborating with social media companies to censor free speech.
The Department of Justice has said that turning over the documents would show internal communications, but Judge Terry Doughty rejected that argument in his ruling.
Last year the White House began a campaign to encourage Facebook and other social media giants to heighten the battle on misinformation about COVID-19 on their platforms, a move many conservatives regarded as an attempt at suppressing free speech, The Kansas City Star reported.
Schmitt's office celebrated the court's ruling, stating in a press release that "the American people deserve answers on how the federal government has colluded with social media companies to censor free speech on these major platforms. We will continue to fight to uncover more of this vast censorship enterprise."
The Missouri and Louisiana attorney generals had already successfully obtained and released records demonstrating that officials from several federal agencies had made contact with social media companies to coordinate censorship, the Daily Caller reported.
In its ruling, the court also said that government defendants must answer discovery requests connected to several specific Health and Human Service officials, but denied the request of the plaintiffs to force those defendants to answer discovery requests about other agencies.