A federal judge ruled on Tuesday that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. can move forward with his lawsuit against the Biden administration, accusing the government of directing censorship.
The decision follows a June ruling by the Supreme Court, which determined that those seeking to sue the Biden administration for violating their First Amendment rights—by pressuring social media companies to suppress free speech—did not have standing to bring their cases.
District Court Judge Terry Doughty stated that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. meets the Supreme Court’s standard because there is ‘ample evidence’ that he was censored at the direction of government officials and faces a ‘substantial risk’ of continued censorship, according to the Daily Caller.
Under the Supreme Court’s Murthy v. Missouri ruling, Doughty explained that “a court must make specific findings that a particular defendant pressured a particular platform to censor a particular topic before the platform suppressed a particular plaintiff’s speech on that topic.”
Kennedy was listed among the ‘Disinformation Dozen’ and was specifically targeted by the government for alleged COVID-19 misinformation, Judge Doughty noted in his ruling. He added that there is ‘not much dispute’ that Kennedy and his organization, Children’s Health Defense, were “specifically targeted by the White House, the Office of Surgeon General, and CISA [Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency].”
“The Court finds that there is further risk for future risk injury here because Kennedy is a 2024 presidential candidate,” Doughty wrote.
“For example, if, hypothetically, the FBI saw a piece of information related to the 2024 presidential election posted by the Kennedy campaign on social media that it deemed to be ‘misinformation,’ then it reached out to CISA, who worked closely with the EIP, who then removed the posts, Kennedy would be censored by the action of one Government Defendant in response to another,” he added.
As reported by the Daily Caller, “Doughty granted Kennedy an injunction in February blocking multiple federal agencies from coercing or significantly encouraging platforms to suppress protected speech, which he put on hold pending the Supreme Court’s ruling. In response to the government’s appeal, the Fifth Circuit in July sent the case back to the district court to rule on the plaintiffs’ standing.”
According to New Civil Liberties Alliance litigation counsel Jenin Younes, “It is gratifying that Judge Doughty found RFK, Jr. and Children’s Health Defense have standing, even under the draconian requirements the Supreme Court developed in Murthy,” adding “We are assessing next steps for the Murthy plaintiffs in light of Judge Doughty’s opinion, which will also assist us in crafting discovery requests to ensure we can demonstrate standing going forward.”
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