The U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday sided with the Biden administration in a censorship case brought by conservatives who argued the president overstepped his authority by ordering social media companies to ban users and remove posts during the pandemic.

In a 6-3 ruling, the court reversed a lower court’s opinion finding that the administration erred in pressuring companies like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter to remove messages about the pandemic, masks, or vaccines it deemed harmful to public health. The case was brought by the Republican attorneys general of Missouri and Lousiana and five plaintiffs who claimed they were affected.

“The plaintiffs rely on allegations of past Government censorship as evidence that future censorship is likely,” Justice Amy Coney Barrett wrote in the majority opinion, the Daily Caller reported. “But they fail, by and large, to link their past social-media restrictions to the defendants’ communications with the platforms. Thus, the events of the past do little to help any of the plaintiffs establish standing to seek an injunction to prevent future harms.”

Conservative justices Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, and Samuel Alito dissented, with the latter writing that the majority “permits the successful campaign of coercion in this case to stand as an attractive model for future officials who want to control what the people say, hear, and think.”

“It was blatantly unconstitutional, and the country may come to regret the Court’s failure to say so,” he wrote, the outlet added.

In July 2023, Louisiana U.S. District Judge Terry A. Doughty found that the federal government egregiously overstepped its authority by “coercing or significantly encouraging” social media companies to comply with their demands or face repercussions. The “Orwellian” claims could be “the most massive attack against free speech in United States’ history,” he wrote at the time. A Fifth Circuit court later narrowed Doughty’s ruling but still reasoned that the White House, Surgeon General, CDC, FBI, and CISA violated the First Amendment.

The latest case saw the federal government criticize the previous injunction, saying the lower court’s move puts “unprecedented limits on the ability of the President’s closest aides to use the bully pulpit to address matters of public concern.” Conservatives online ripped the Supreme Court for its decision.

“The Supreme Court has ruled that, practically, the government can continue pressuring social media companies to censor Americans. This is an absolute gut punch,” Glenn Beck wrote on X. “SCOTUS finding a lack of standing for the plaintiffs in Murthy v. Missouri effectively means that the government is free to violate your rights so long as they do so through a third party,” added Spectator editor Amber Duke.

Investigative reporter Julie Kelly posted additional writings by Justice Barrett, with the majority concluding that plaintiffs failed to produce evidence that the government was behind instances of suppression at Twitter and LinkedIn. In another, Barrett writes it couldn’t be ruled out that Twitter censored a user according to its own terms, not pressure from a federal agency.