Taking a firm stand against what some have called one of the most severe infringements on the US constitution’s First Amendment guarantees for freedom of speech and press freedom in the country’s history, the New Civil Liberties Alliance has filed a lawsuit to the US District Court for the Eastern District of Texas on behalf of media outlets, The Daily Wire and The Federalist.
The lawsuit is in association with the State of Texas and its Attorney General Ken Paxton.
The group accuses the US State Department of a clear violation of First Amendment rights through the funding and promoting of the development, testing, and marketing of censorship technology used to quash conservative viewpoints.
We obtained a copy of the complaint for you here.
Organizations such as NewsGuard and the Global Disinformation Index are part of the web spun by the State Department’s Global Engagement Center (GEC) to discredit and financially weaken select American media outlets.
In an attempt to redirect audiences and advertisers toward favored perspectives, these government-sponsored tools are employed to suppress conservative news outlets including The Daily Wire and The Federalist.
The NCLA continues to combat the government’s censorship drive through this case, and others such as Murthy v. Missouri, currently awaiting judgment at the Supreme Court, and Dressen v. Flaherty, which addresses the controversial joint venture between the federal government and Stanford Internet Observatory aiming to suppress online speech posted in non-public groups.
These stand as integral milestones in NCLA’s fight against government censorship, asserting that such governmental strategies starkly disregard the Constitution, which firmly establishes Americans’ First Amendment rights.
In a statement to Reclaim The Net, Peggy Little, Senior Litigation Counsel of NCLA said the following: “George Orwell, call your office: The Disinformation Governance Board is back! Worse, it was here all along quietly operating out of the State Department through three presidential administrations with the admitted intent of cutting off advertising dollars and viewership from conservative media outlets. Your State Department—which may only address foreign affairs—has been secretly scheming with and funding private companies to create blacklists of conservative media outlets to defund and silence speech with which it disagrees.”
A spokesperson for The Daily Wire told Reclaim The Net in a statement; “We sued the Biden administration before over its unconstitutional vaccine mandate, and we won. This time, we’re suing for our rights, all news organizations’ rights, and the constitutional guarantee of a free press that all Americans deserve.”
“We will not stop until this entire corrupt edifice has been torn down, brick by brick, and every single person involved has been held accountable,” said Mollie Hemingway, Editor-in-Chief of The Federalist.
“I am proud to lead the fight to save Americans’ precious constitutional rights from Joe Biden’s tyrannical federal government,” said Texas Attorney General Paxton. “The State Department’s mission to obliterate the First Amendment is completely un-American. This agency will not get away with their illegal campaign to silence citizens and publications they disagree with.”
