Five Discord users backed by civic technology group BetterGov.PH have asked the Supreme Court to void the government orders that led to Discord being blocked in the Philippines in September.
The petition for certiorari and prohibition was filed October 1 and made public by Newsbytes.PH. It names Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT) Secretary Henry Aguda, Cybercrime Investigation and Coordinating Center (CICC) Executive Director Renato Paraiso, and National Telecommunications Commission (NTC) Commissioner Ella Blanca Lopez as respondents.
The petitioners are lawyer Arjel P. de Guzman, BetterGov.PH co-convenor Christopher Star De La Torre, Eddie Francis Cesar Plaza, Eliezer Rabadon, and Carlo Ople. They filed as taxpayers and Discord users.
They want the Court to annul the CICC’s September 22 directive and the NTC’s September 23 memorandum that ordered internet service providers to block Discord for 15 days.
The petition also seeks a writ permanently restraining the respondents and people acting under their authority from carrying out “unilateral, wholesale, nationwide blocking” through geofencing or similar methods.
The petitioners argue that the agencies had no statutory authority to impose a platform-wide block and that the orders amounted to prior restraint and violated due process and equal protection. Those are claims in the petition; the Supreme Court has not ruled on whether the September orders were unlawful.
They cite the Court’s 2014 ruling in Disini v. Secretary of Justice, which struck down Section 19 of the Cybercrime Prevention Act. The provision allowed the Department of Justice to restrict or block access to computer data it found prima facie to violate the law without first obtaining judicial authorization.
Philippine law separately provides for targeted blocking in specific circumstances. Republic Act No. 11930, for example, requires internet service providers to block identified child sexual abuse or exploitation material after receiving sufficiently specific notice.
The current petition challenges the authority to block an entire platform.
The dispute began when the CICC sent letters to Reddit and Discord on September 21 giving them 24 hours to designate a resident agent or establish a local representative in the Philippines.
On September 22, Aguda and Paraiso requested a 15-day suspension of Discord, followed by the NTC blocking memorandum the next day.
The petition cites reports that Discord became inaccessible on Globe, GOMO, and PLDT on the evening of September 23. Contemporaneous reports indicated that access varied among providers and users.
The DICT and CICC lifted the restriction on September 24 after meeting with Discord officials. Paraiso later apologized to people affected and inconvenienced by the hours-long block.
On September 25, the DICT directed internet service providers and the NTC to complete the nationwide restoration of access to Discord and Reddit after the platforms agreed to additional online-safety measures.
Because Discord access had already been restored, the petition asks the Court to hear the case under the exception for issues “capable of repetition yet evading review.”
The petitioners argue that the officials have not disavowed their claimed power to block platforms and point to earlier government warnings involving Roblox.
Paraiso had separately defended the Discord restriction by invoking parens patriae, referring to the State’s responsibility to protect its citizens.
The DICT, CICC, and NTC have not publicly commented on the petition.