Doughty found that the govt coerced them into the censorship.
Why didn’t SCOTUS find the same thing?
(beyond that they obviously chose not to find it)
By that same logic, the District Court Judge who dismissed Heller's lawsuit against the District of Columbia should have had precedence over the higher courts (first the Court of Appeals that remanded the dismissal, then the SCOTUS who affirmed Heller's lawsuit).
Doughty found that the govt coerced them into the censorship.Why didn’t SCOTUS find the same thing?
SCOTUS did not find the same thing as SCOTUS found there was a lack of standing. Plaintiffs sued the government and had the burden of proving that at least one plaintiff suffered a particular injury not shared by others. Plaintiffs did not sue the platforms that allegedly censored them, and did not provide a showing that any of them suffered a particularized injury at the hands of the government.
Standing is a constitutional requirement in every case to establish the jurisdiction of the court. Absent standing, the court has no jurisdiction to hear and decide the case on the merits. When SCOTUS found a lack of standing, it had no authority to proceed. Similarly, the lower courts had no jurisdiction to hear and decide the case either. The lower courts erred in finding standing where it did not exist.
In Murthy, Barrett, writing for the Court, found as related by the Syllabus:
Held: Neither the individual nor the state plaintiffs have established Article III standing to seek an injunction against any defendant. Pp. 8–29.(a) Article III’s “case or controversy” requirement is “fundamental” to the “proper role” of the Judiciary. Raines v. Byrd, 521 U. S. 811, 818. A proper case or controversy exists only when at least one plaintiff “establish[es] that [she] ha[s] standing to sue,” ibid.—i.e., that she has suffered, or will suffer, an injury that is “concrete, particularized, and actual or imminent; fairly traceable to the challenged action; and redressable by a favorable ruling,” Clapper v. Amnesty Int’l USA, 568 U. S. 398, 409. Here, the plaintiffs’ theories of standing depend on the platforms’ actions—yet the plaintiffs do not seek to enjoin the platforms from restricting any posts or accounts. Instead, they seek to enjoin the Government agencies and officials from pressuring or encouraging the platforms to suppress protected speech in the future. The one-step-removed, anticipatory nature of the plaintiffs’ alleged injuries presents two particular challenges. First, it is a bedrock principle that a federal court cannot redress “injury that results from the independent action of some third party not before the court.” Simon v. Eastern Ky. Welfare Rights Organization, 426 U. S. 26, 41–42. Second, because the plaintiffs request forward-looking relief, they must face “a real and immediate threat of repeated injury.” O’Shea v. Littleton, 414 U. S. 488, 496. Putting these requirements together, the plaintiffs must show a substantial risk that, in the near future, at least one platform will restrict the speech of at least one plaintiff in response to the actions of at least one Government defendant. Here, at the preliminary injunction stage, they must show that they are likely to succeed in carrying that burden. On the record in this case, that is a tall order. Pp. 8–10.
(b) The plaintiffs’ primary theory of standing involves their “direct censorship injuries.” Pp. 10–26.
(1) The Court first considers whether the plaintiffs have demonstrated traceability for their past injuries. Because the plaintiffs are seeking only forward-looking relief, the past injuries are relevant only for their predictive value. The primary weakness in the record of past restrictions is the lack of specific causation findings with respect to any discrete instance of content moderation. And while the record reflects that the Government defendants played a role in at least some of the platforms’ moderation choices, the evidence indicates that the platforms had independent incentives to moderate content and often exercised their own judgment. The Fifth Circuit, by attributing every platform decision at least in part to the defendants, glossed over complexities in the evidence. The Fifth Circuit also erred by treating the defendants, plaintiffs, and platforms each as a unified whole. Because “standing is not dispensed in gross,” TransUnion LLC v. Ramirez, 594 U. S. 413, 431, “plaintiffs must demonstrate standing for each claim they press against each defendant, “and for each form of relief they seek,” ibid. This requires a threshold showing that a particular defendant pressured a particular platform to censor a particular topic before that platform suppressed a particular plaintiff’s speech on that topic. Complicating the plaintiffs’ effort to demonstrate that each platform acted due to Government coercion, rather than its own judgment, is the fact that the platforms began to suppress the plaintiffs’ COVID–19 content before the defendants’ challenged communications started. Pp. 10–14.