Conservative law firm launches probe into five major universities for alleged 'censorship regime'

"The American people have a right to know if their tax dollars were used to suppress certain voices and how involved state actors were-and are-in social media censorship," Sechler said in the statement.

The White House said the federal government will not censor speech on social media or any online platform in general, which they said was executed "under the guise of combating 'misinformation,' 'disinformation,' and 'malinformation.'"

ADF claims that these universities created "misinformation" centers that are "designed to censor speech."

CSMR's website explains further that while social media product managers, designers, and engineers "are the day-to-day policymakers of today's social media landscape," the institution aims to help them articulate "principles" as well as create "metrics and tools" that help them "set responsible policy."

The law firm wants records related to the CSMR containing any communication between the CSMR administrators, including the director, and federal government officials or employees. Furthermore, ADF requests documents related to communication between CSMR directors and employees of social media companies Google, Facebook, Instagram, "Twitter," YouTube, Snapchat, and Reddit.

Acquiring such communication would help ADF identify any "certain censorship red flags," in its view, like "cancel," "throttle," "First Amendment," and "free speech." 

Considering that NSF "is responsible for funding censorship grants," ADF wants records containing any of the terms National Science Foundation and NSF. 

ADF suspects that CSMR and similar institutions at IU, UW, UNC, and UCLA had worked with the Biden administration.

Sechler claimed that the Biden administration "established a censorship regime that aimed to suppress so-called 'misinformation' and other speech deemed unfavorable to the government," which "included funding censorship tools created by these public universities."

"The U.S. government should defend our First Amendment right to free speech, not be its greatest threat," he said.