Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is joining Republican-backed lawsuits against the White House over social media censorship, saying he too has been a victim of the Biden administration’s censorship apparatus.
On Tuesday, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in two cases in which the White House allegedly forced social media giants to censor or shut down accounts for allegedly spreading disinformation about covid-19.
But Kennedy is highly critical of American politicians deciding who should and should not be censored, and thus what opinions should be allowed to be expressed in public.
– I don’t think the government should be involved. The social media sites are welcome to have programs or processes or community rules with a consensus, but once the government gets involved and the First Amendment is implicated, he explained in a recent interview.
– Social media sites ought to be able to police their sites to take off kiddie porn to take off, advocates of violence or racism or whatever. Once the government gets involved and tells them what to do, then you know, we have a First Amendment problem, he continued.
Kennedy himself has also decided to sue the Biden administration for censorship – after his social media accounts were restricted in January 2021 – citing “inaccurate information” about the death of baseball legend Hank Aaron from complications after being injected with a covid vaccine.
Awaiting Supreme Court decision
The presidential candidate says the White House ordered the social media giants to restrict his accounts, which they did. He won a temporary restraining order in the case last month, but it was halted pending the Supreme Court cases.
The two cases heard by the Supreme Court on Tuesday were brought by the states of Louisiana and Missouri. A federal judge in Louisiana initially barred Biden administration officials from communicating with social media companies about the “removal, deletion, suppression, or censorship” of content containing “protected free speech” last July.
A three-judge panel of the appeals court narrowed the original ruling in September, but agreed that administration officials likely violated the Constitution by asking social media companies to remove certain content.
It remains unclear how the Supreme Court will ultimately rule on the issue. The lower court rulings are on hold during the appeal.
