BREAKING NEWS: Kennedy Scores Major Free Speech Victory

By Adam Garrie, The Kennedy Beacon

The Biden administration can no longer force social media companies to censor speech it finds objectionable, according to a new legal decision delivered in the context of the Kennedy v. Biden  lawsuit. 

Chief United States  District Judge Terry A. Doughty, of the Western district of Louisiana, denied the administration’s motions to get legal permission to continue censoring constitutionally protected speech. 

Doughty’s decision, handed down on July 9, is a major legal victory for independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Responding to the court’s ruling, on July 10 Kennedy wrote on X: 

Big victory in the Kennedy v. Biden censorship case. A live injunction is in place preventing the Biden Administration from coercing or colluding with social media to censor me. You’d think that a President who has sworn to protect the Constitution wouldn’t need a court injunction to respect free speech. But such are the times we live in.

Kennedy is the lead plaintiff in a suit against the Biden administration in which the president and federal agencies under the administration’s control are accused of violating the First Amendment by coercing privately-owned social media companies into censoring user-generated content. 

The merits of the Kennedy v. Biden are similar to those of the Murthy v. Missouri case, which the Supreme Court recently returned to a lower court after finding that the attorneys general of Missouri and Louisiana did not have standing – that is, they felt that the plaintiffs in that case could not prove direct harm from the censorship alleged in the lawsuit. 

Kennedy’s separate but similar lawsuit likely will have no such problems, as public evidence demonstrates clear harm: within the first 72 hours of the Biden administration’s term, in January 2021, the administration demanded that social media companies censor Kennedy’s posts, as reported in The Kennedy Beacon. 

Kennedy is in a unique position as both a presidential candidate and a litigant in a case that includes massive evidence that he was directly censored by the Biden administration. 

Mary Holland, CEO of Children's Health Defense (CHD), a co-plaintiff in the Kennedy v. Biden lawsuit, said, “CHD and Kennedy are at the front of the pack here on the First Amendment. We'll have to see what’s going to happen at the 5th Circuit, but the case is moving in our direction.”

The Biden administration has appealed Judge Doughty’s ruling to the US 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, following a similar legal path that the administration took in fighting the Murthy case. 

The fact that the administration moved to seek a court order allowing the resumption of online censorship in the midst of President Biden’s fight for political survival underscores the high priority the administration places on suppressing speech it finds inconvenient.