Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Children’s Health Defense (CHD) are free to proceed with a lawsuit accusing the Biden-Harris administration of censorship, the US District Court for the Western District of Louisiana has ruled.
We obtained a copy of the ruling for you here.
The court found that the plaintiffs have legal standing in their bid to prove that the Biden White House is guilty of collusion with Big Tech by means of pressuring these companies to do the government’s bidding in stifling speech.
If done directly, this would be unconstitutional, but the Biden administration still found a way, it has been alleged multiple times over the past years, including by Kennedy and CHD who claim their social media posts were censored as a result of the collusion.
The posts in question expressed opposition to the government’s Covid policy, including measures such as mask and vaccine mandates and lockdowns.
Previously, the plaintiffs filed for a preliminary injunction that would have prevented ongoing “coordination” between the government and tech companies behind social media affecting Kennedy and CHD, but a federal court of appeals did not approve this.
The preliminary injunction had been sought as a stopgap measure before the district court could rule whether the case – Kennedy v. Biden – would be allowed to proceed. Now that the legal standing has been established, the 5th Circuit will be deciding on the injunction again.
Judge Terry Doughty of the Louisiana district court found there is legal justification for the lawsuit, and CHD General Counsel Kim Mack Rosenberg said the decision on this was made by applying “the framework from the US Supreme Court’s recent decision in Murthy v. Missouri regarding standing.”
As for the evidence of Kennedy and CHD being subjected to censorship, the judge ruled that the way the government behaved was “traceable to direct statements and instructions to social media platforms” – Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube among them.
Judge Doughty also noted that Kennedy was named as one of the “disinformation dozen” – a term coined by the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) (a controversial British censorship-promoting group.)
The ruling cites concrete instances when Kennedy’s and CHD’s posts were removed at the government’s requests – proof of this being in emails sent by the Biden White House’s Covid response team.
