© Eva Marie Uzcategui/Getty ImagesRobert F. Kennedy Jr.
The Supreme Court ruled in June that state and individual plaintiffs who alleged the Biden administration violated their First Amendment rights when it pressured social media companies to suppress speech did not have standing to sue. District Court Judge Terry Doughty found Kennedy meets the standard set by the Supreme Court because there is "ample evidence" to show he has been censored in the past at the direction of government actors and "substantial risk" that the censorship will continue.
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."
Full text:Kennedy was part of the "Disinformation Dozen" specifically targeted by the government over alleged COVID-19 misinformation, Doughty noted. He wrote there is "not much dispute" that Kennedy, along with the organization he leads, Children's Health Defense, "were specifically targeted by the White House, the Office of Surgeon General, and CISA [Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency]."
BREAKING: RFK Jr. and CHD Get Green Light to Sue Biden Administration for Censorship
A Louisiana district court ruled late Tuesday that plaintiffs @RobertKennedyJr
and Children's Health Defense have the legal right to sue the Biden administration for pressuring tech giants to censor their social media posts.
"Judge Terry Doughty carefully and clearly analyzed the law and facts and applied the framework from the U.S. Supreme Court's recent decision in Murthy v. Missouri regarding standing. The court also firmly found in plaintiffs' favor that plaintiffs had not waived — and indeed had affirmatively raised — direct censorship claims in addition to listener claims." @KimMRosenberg
CHD CEO @maryhollandnyc said Doughty found that the government's conduct is traceable to direct statements and instructions to social media platforms, including Facebook, Instagram and YouTube.
Doughty also reviewed a series of meetings and emails between the @WhiteHouse
and Twitter and Facebook, which occurred throughout 2021, in which those companies agreed to de-amplify, place warnings on or fully censor posts containing so-called "vaccine misinformation," regardless of whether the information was true.
"Facebook admitted that although the CHD's posts did not violate its policies, it would suppress content that originated from CHD," Doughty wrote.
"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."
District Court Judge Terry Doughty
"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," New Civil Liberties Alliance litigation counsel Jenin Younes told the Daily Caller News Foundation. "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."
The Kennedy campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Comment: RFK Jr. hasn't been fighting just the Democrat machine