Biden admin faces class-action suit for pressuring Big Tech to censor social media

The Biden administration faces a class-action suit over the efforts of high-ranking officials to pressure Big Tech firms to censor their users.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., along with Children's Health Defense, and Louisiana resident Connie Sampognaro brought the suit, pointing to government-pressured social media censorship that led to Kennedy being labeled a spreader of "misinformation" and ultimately removed from platforms such as Instagram.

"Beginning in early 2020 and continuing to the present day, the federal government has waged a systematic, concerted campaign, astonishing in its breadth and effectiveness, to 'induce, encourage, [and] promote' the nation's three largest social-media platforms 'to accomplish what [the government] is constitutionally forbidden to accomplish' -namely, the censorship of constitutionally protected speech," the suit alleges.

It further contends that the government-orchestrated campaign "successfully targeted constitutionally protected speech on the basis of its content and viewpoint."

Among the examples that the plaintiffs cited was the widespread censorship of a bombshell New York Post report based on materials recovered from Hunter Biden's laptop. It further pointed to the consistent suppression of dissenting opinions on the origins of COVID-19.

Kennedy et al. do not seek any damages and merely ask for declaratory and injunctive relief. The suit names Biden, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, Dr. Anthony Fauci, and a litany of other major administration officials as defendants.

The Epoch Times noted that Kennedy's suit uses much of the same evidence presented in a separate court case brought by Missouri and Louisiana attorney generals in the same court.

U.S. District Judge Terry Doughty has allowed that case to advance, ruling that the states have standing and sufficient evidence to proceed to trial.

"The threat of future censorship is substantial, and the history of past censorship is strong evidence that the threat of further censorship is not illusory or merely speculative," he wrote in March.

Ben Whedon is an editor and reporter for Just the News. Follow him on Twitter.