In a Monday lawsuit, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and the super PAC backing his independent presidential bid accused Meta of violating the First Amendment by preventing a political advertisement from running on its platforms
Kennedy Jr. and the American Values 2024 super PAC sued Meta in federal court in San Francisco after a 30-minute campaign ad was temporarily removed on Instagram and Facebook last week.
According to Meta, the video, titled “Who is Bobby Kennedy” and narrated by actor Woody Harrelson, “was mistakenly blocked and was quickly restored once the issue was uncovered.”
Kennedy Jr. accused the company of violating his and users’ First Amendment rights, citing the federal government’s efforts to pressure tech companies to censor COVID-19 misinformation during the pandemic. He claimed Meta’s COVID-19 misinformation policies are “the product of government coercion, significant encouragement, and close collusion.”
Meta’s Covid-19 content moderation policies are no longer in place in the United States, as the Covid-19 public health emergency ended in May last year.
In addition to violating the First Amendment, Kennedy Jr. and the super PAC accused Meta of violating a civil rights law that prohibits people from conspiring to threaten, intimidate, or force citizens to refrain from lawful political speech in support of a federal candidate, claiming Meta disabled and suspended users’ accounts for sharing the video.
Kennedy Jr. seeks compensatory and punitive damages and an injunction preventing Meta from censoring any new content supporting his campaign.
Suing a private firm on free speech grounds may prove difficult. Kennedy brought a similar complaint against Google last year, claiming that YouTube violated the First Amendment by eliminating campaign content.
However, a judge refused his request for a restraining order, determining that Google is a private actor and not subject to the same First Amendment restrictions as a government entity.
10%. According to a Monday New York Times/Siena poll, that is the percentage of voters in six battleground states (Nevada, Pennsylvania, Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, and Wisconsin) who said they would vote for Kennedy Jr. if the election were held today, including 7% of Democrats and 4% of Republicans, while other polls have been split on whether Kennedy Jr. would receive more votes from Trump or Biden.
Kennedy Jr., a well-known Covid-19 vaccine skeptic, was banned from Instagram for over two years for breaching Meta’s policy on Covid-19 misrepresentation.
Still, the restriction was removed last year after he announced his presidential candidacy. In the campaign film, Kennedy Jr. briefly discusses the pandemic, alleging that he was “silenced” when he spoke up about his fears “that a rushed Covid vaccine wouldn’t be as safe as or as effective as promised” and expressed his views “that lockdowns were going to do more harm than good.”
(Studies have indicated that coronavirus vaccines effectively lower the risk of severe infection, and significant adverse effects are uncommon.) The lawsuit states that the White House pressured tech companies, including Meta and Twitter, to remove vaccination falsehoods during the pandemic, including content promoted by Kennedy Jr.
