Does the Constitution Really Say the Government Can Decide Which True Things You’re Allowed to Hear?

Government can call a true thing dangerous, and never pass a single law.
They named the danger “malinformation” — true, but inconvenient.
The First Amendment has a word for that. So does this series.

By Jeff Bayard | Does the Constitution Really Say? — Part 11

This is the eleventh part of Does the Constitution Really Say?, a Virginia Christian Alliance series on the Supreme Court cases where the original meaning of the Constitution was quietly swapped for something else. Earlier parts asked what happens when:

• a developer can seize your house — and call it “public use”
• the government can punish you for growing food on your own land
• the state can shut you out of your own trade
• your country can strip your citizenship as a punishment
• your town can be ordered to strip faith from its schools and public square
• a coach can be fired for kneeling to pray after a game
• officials can ban words simply for being “offensive”
• the government can track your every move without a warrant
• your right to keep and bear arms can be treated as the militia’s, not yours
• the government can weigh you by your group instead of seeing the person

You won’t find this take anywhere else. Not because it’s a secret. But because almost no one still does the work of going back to the actual words. This series does.

This week we turn to a newer word for an old temptation. Does the Constitution really say the government can decide which true things you’re allowed to hear?

A True Post, Flagged Anyway

Mark posts something true. Not shocking. Not a rumor. Just a fact he checked twice before he hit send.

By that evening, the post is gone. Not deleted — just quieted. Fewer people see it. No warning. No explanation. When he asks why, the answer is a form letter: “flagged under our misinformation policy.”

But Mark didn’t post misinformation. Misinformation means being wrong. He wasn’t wrong. He checked.

Here’s what Mark doesn’t know. His post was never accused of being false. Somewhere upstream — an email, a phone call, a dashboard he’ll never see — someone had already sorted it into a newer category. Not misinformation. Not disinformation. A quieter word, built for exactly this moment: malinformation. It means information that is true, but that somebody in power would rather you not say.

Mark just found out the government has a name for that. He’s about to find out it also built a way to act on it. No new law required.

A quick word before we go on, because it matters. This isn’t a story about social media platforms changing their rules. Platforms do that all the time, and they’re free to. This is a story about government reaching into that process from behind the scenes — leaning on platforms to enforce what officials want, without ever putting it into a law that Congress voted on or a citizen could challenge in court. That’s the line the Constitution actually cares about.

So here’s the question this series asks every time: does the Constitution really say the government can decide which true things you’re allowed to hear?

What the Words Meant

The promise is in the First Amendment, ratified in 1791:

Congress shall make no law … abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press…

Look at who it restrains. Not the citizen. Not the newspaper. Not the platform. Congress — the government itself. The Founders had just fought a war against a king who punished people for saying true things he didn’t like. They didn’t write this to protect nice speech, or popular speech, or correct speech. They wrote it to keep the government out of judging speech at all.

Virginia had a hand in that. In 1776, George Mason wrote Virginia’s own Declaration of Rights. It protected the press — but not speech itself. Then, in 1788, Virginia’s Ratifying Convention asked for more. Virginia demanded a real guarantee of free speech, as one of about twenty changes it wanted made. A Virginian, James Madison, carried that demand into the First Amendment he wrote for the whole country. This promise isn’t an abstract idea. Virginia asked for it, by name.

The Founders also knew what governments do when left unchecked. They had lived under a king who licensed the press — who decided in advance what was safe to print. The First Amendment was built to make that kind of gatekeeping impossible to rebuild. In any form. Under any name.

And they weren’t being paranoid. Just seven years after the First Amendment was ratified, the same Congress that passed it also passed the Sedition Act of 1798. It made it a crime to publish anything “false, scandalous, and malicious” about the government. A Vermont congressman went to jail for calling the president unfit for office. The law claimed to punish only lies — truth was even allowed as a defense in court. It didn’t matter. Whoever held power got to decide what counted as a lie. And they used that power almost entirely against people who disagreed with them. The law collapsed in disgrace within three years. Jefferson pardoned everyone convicted under it. But the lesson outlived the law: give a government the power to decide which speech is too dangerous to allow, and it will use that power on whoever disagrees with it.

That’s the plain promise. The government doesn’t get to grade your speech for its own comfort. Not by banning it outright. And — this is what Part 11 is really about — not by getting someone else to do the banning for it.

What the Words Now Mean: Three Stages

That promise has been bent by a new vocabulary. It didn’t happen all at once. It happened in stages — each one a step further from the question “is this true?”

Stage one: misinformation. False information, spread by mistake. An honest error. Everyone agrees this should be corrected somehow.

Stage two: disinformation. False information, spread on purpose, to deceive people. Still about lies — just lies with intent behind them.

Stage three: malinformation. Here the ladder breaks. This category isn’t about lies at all. It means information that is true — checked, verified, accurate — but that officials decide is harmful anyway, because of when it’s said, or who might use it. Read that again. The government didn’t need you to be wrong. It only needed to decide you were inconvenient.

That’s not a theory. It’s a real category. Government agencies — including the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, or CISA — have used this exact term in their own published materials. And once “true but unhelpful” becomes an official category, only one question is left: who decides what’s unhelpful? History gives the same answer every time. Whoever is currently in charge.

During COVID and the 2020 election, federal officials talked with social media platforms often — about posts, about policies, about what should be flagged. Alternative treatments got swept into this in a big way. Certain low-cost options got labeled “misinformation” during that time — not because they were proven, but because raising them at all was treated as the problem. Whether those treatments worked is a medical question. Whether Americans were allowed to even talk about it in public is a constitutional one. That’s the question this piece is actually asking.

What Happened Next: Two Tracks, Not One

Twice, in the same year, the Supreme Court looked at government pressure on speech. The two cases didn’t end the same way. And the gap between them is where this kind of pressure survives.

The clean win: NRA v. Vullo (2024). A New York regulator named Maria Vullo pressured insurance companies and banks she oversaw to cut ties with the National Rifle Association. Not because the NRA broke any law — because the state disliked its message. The Supreme Court ruled 9–0. Every justice agreed: this broke the First Amendment. The Court drew a clear line. Government officials can try to persuade you — argue, criticize, speak up. They have that right too. What they cannot do is coerce — use the power of their office to threaten consequences if you don’t comply. Vullo crossed that line, and every justice said so.

The case that never got answered: Murthy v. Missouri (2024). This case aimed at something bigger — a wide, sustained effort by federal officials to pressure platforms over COVID and election posts. But the Supreme Court never actually ruled on whether that pressure broke the First Amendment. In a 6–3 decision, the Court said the people suing couldn’t prove their own posts were taken down because of one specific official’s pressure, instead of the platform’s own choice. The case was thrown out on that technical ground — called “standing” — before the real question was ever answered.

You can see this same gap play out away from social media entirely. In 2021, the Federation of State Medical Boards warned physicians that spreading COVID-19 “misinformation or disinformation” — including about vaccines — risked disciplinary action, up to losing their license. State boards took that warning seriously. In Washington state, four doctors are now suing their own medical commission, asking a court to strike down its power to discipline them over unapproved treatments or “misinformation,” arguing the policy violates their constitutional right to free speech. That case is still working through the courts as this is written. No single official ordered any of it. One federation issued guidance. Boards opened cases. Doctors are now fighting back in court, arguing the same First Amendment question this whole piece is asking. That fight didn’t need a new law either — and neither will its answer.

Put the two Supreme Court cases together, and the pattern is clear. When pressure comes from one official, aimed at one target, in a way a court can trace step by step — like Vullo — the First Amendment wins. Every time. When that same kind of pressure spreads across many agencies and institutions, aimed broadly instead of at one person — like Murthy, like the doctors — it becomes almost impossible to prove in court. The Supreme Court never approved this kind of pressure campaign. It survives simply because it’s too spread out to put on trial.

The Strongest Argument the Other Way

The other side of this isn’t wicked, and it isn’t stupid. It deserves to be heard at its strongest.

Government isn’t meant to stay silent. Public health officials have a real duty to correct dangerous lies during a pandemic. Election officials have a real duty to protect the vote. And government officials have their own free speech rights too — the Constitution stops Congress from passing laws that restrict speech, but it has never required government to stay quiet when it disagrees with something. If every instance of government “urging” counted as a violation, that would silence government itself — and take away rights the same Amendment protects for everyone, officials included.

That’s a serious argument. Here’s the serious answer.

Vullo already drew the line the Constitution actually requires. Persuading is protected. Coercing is not. The real test isn’t whether an official spoke up. It’s whether that speech came with a threat attached — a regulation, a lost contract, a legal risk, a license, a hospital job, a company’s fear of losing favor with regulators. When “urging” starts to carry that kind of weight, from someone with the power to follow through, it has crossed from speech into force. And the government doesn’t get to escape that just because the pressure came from ten agencies instead of one, or was aimed at a whole category of people instead of one name. If it’s wrong coming from one regulator, it’s still wrong coming from ten.

If government truly believes it needs a bigger, more formal role here, there’s an honest way to ask for it. Part 10 named it: Article V, the amendment process. That road is hard on purpose. A power this big should never rest on quiet phone calls and warning letters that no one voted for and no court can easily trace. When a power can’t clear that bar in the open, building it quietly instead isn’t a shortcut. It’s an admission that the country never agreed to it.

Did God Really Say?

The oldest trick in Scripture was never a flat lie. In the garden, the serpent didn’t start by calling God a liar. He asked a question, then twisted a true word: “Has God indeed said…?”

Malinformation is that same move, made official. The serpent didn’t need Eve to believe something false. He needed her to distrust something true. Malinformation works the same way. It doesn’t ask, “is this false?” It asks, “should this be said?” — and hands that decision to whoever holds the power. Not to the person listening.

Scripture takes a hard, clear stand on this. Truth isn’t something a government gets to manage on the public’s behalf. Proverbs 11:1 (NKJV) says, “Dishonest scales are an abomination to the LORD, but a just weight is His delight.” A dishonest scale doesn’t have to tell an outright lie. It just has to tip things unevenly, while looking fair. A government that quietly hides true information because it’s inconvenient is running that same kind of scale. Scripture calls it an abomination — no matter who’s holding it, or why.

The prophet Daniel gives us the harder example. He refused a king’s order — not because the order was false, but because obeying it meant abandoning what he knew was true and right, whatever it cost him (Daniel 6). Scripture honors that pattern again and again: a person who won’t let a true thing go unsaid, just because someone more powerful would rather it stayed quiet.

What the Citizen Does

Start by knowing the words for yourself. Hillsdale College offers its Constitution 101 course free and online. Hillsdale takes no state or federal money — not even student aid — which keeps its teaching free of political pressure. Dozens of courses, no cost, go at your own pace. Start there.

And remember Virginia’s part in this one — a proud one, this time. It was Virginia’s 1788 Ratifying Convention that first demanded a guarantee of free speech. It was a Virginian, James Madison, who carried that demand into the First Amendment itself. Virginia didn’t just receive this promise. Virginia asked for it first, by name. That’s something every Virginian inherits — not just pride in the fight, but a job: notice when the same old trick shows up wearing a new word.

So when any agency, any framework, any headline asks you to believe that “true” and “safe to say” are two different things — ask the question this series is named for. Does the Constitution really say that? A true thing doesn’t become dangerous just because a government official finds it inconvenient. And a right that can be quietly managed instead of openly challenged was never really a right. It was a permission slip.

Next time in Does the Constitution Really Say?…