By MICHAEL MACAGNONE CQ-Roll Call/TNS
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WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court will hear oral arguments Monday in a case that could determine how far the federal government can go to convince social media sites to curtail or remove misinformation about health, safety and other issues of public concern.

The Justice Department has asked the justices to overturn a ruling last year from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit that would sharply limit the government’s ability to communicate with internet giants like Meta, Google and X, the company formerly known as Twitter.

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Agencies communicated with those companies during the Trump and Biden administrations about posts related to the COVID-19 pandemic; the laptop of Hunter Biden, President Joe Biden’s son; and other issues.

The states of Missouri and Louisiana, picking up on long-running conservative concerns over online censorship, filed a lawsuit along with a handful of social media users to challenge what they described as a pressure campaign to suppress views the government disfavored.

They contend that violated their free speech rights because the government coerced social media companies to remove content even if it complied with the companies’ policies.

The 5th Circuit issued an injunction that, if allowed to go into effect, would block government agencies from engaging in “coercion” or “significant encouragement” of social media platforms to take action against protected speech of users.

In a brief at the Supreme Court, the Justice Department told the Supreme Court that ruling would effectively make a judge “the superintendent of the Executive Branch’s communications with and about the platforms.”

“The court imposed unprecedented limits on the ability of the President’s closest aides to speak about matters of public concern, on the FBI’s ability to address threats to the Nation’s security, and on CDC’s ability to relay public-health information,” the brief said.

Legal experts say the case also could reverberate beyond efforts to contain misinformation online, since the Supreme Court could decide dicey issues about when government communication becomes coercion that uses private actors to censor private speech.]