SCOTUS has repeatedly considered the "chilling effect" of government policies to be sufficient to strike down government policies. Here's a long article from MT

SCOTUS has repeatedly considered the "chilling effect" of government policies to be sufficient to strike down government policies. Here's a long article from MTSU about the history of the "chilling effect" on First Amendment jurisprudence: https://mtsu.edu/first-amendment/article/897/chilling-effect https://mtsu.edu/first-amendment/article/897/chilling-effect tl;dr: having a "chilling effect" is, according to SCOTUS, often (but not always) the same thing as "actively suppressing" freedom of speech.