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Court Ruling on Murthy Misses Point Entirely

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16 minute read

From the Brownstone Institute

By Thomas Buckley

The United States Supreme Court ruled, in a 6 to 3 decision, that the plaintiffs in the most important free speech case in decades did not have standing to ask for preliminary injunctive relief.

That is wrong.

In her majority opinion, Justice Amy Coney Barrett bent over sideways to avoid judging the case on its merits – the allegation is that various and sundry government agencies coerced private social media companies to remove posts and tweets and such they did not like – and focused instead on whether or not the plaintiffs had the right, or standing, to ask for and be granted such relief.

The plaintiffs, essentially, had their content throttled or removed from social media platforms at the behest of the government because they did not follow the government line on the pandemic response and election security, daring to question things like social distancing – even Dr. Anthony Fauci has admitted they just made that up – and how secure – or unsecure – a “vote-by-mail” election could possibly be.

The request before the court was to allow an injunction against a number of government agencies that barred improper communication with the social media platforms. The question of whether those agencies did in fact do that – essentially violating the First Amendment rights of the plaintiffs – does not appear at issue. As Justice Samuel Alito (joined in opposition to the ruling by Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch) said in his blistering dissent, that unquestionably happened.

The case, known as Murthy V. Missouri, involves two states and a number of private plaintiffs, all claiming that they were improperly censored – and thus damaged – by federal agencies and/or the dubious “cut out” front groups they created. Alito focused on one plaintiff – Jill Hines, who ran a Louisiana health-related (read pandemic response criticism) that was consistently degraded by Facebook after calls and pronouncements from the White House – in his dissent, noting that she unquestionably had standing (even Barrett admitted that plaintiff was closest, as it were), especially in light of the fact the government itself admitted the plaintiff had been damaged.

In today’s ruling, “The Court, however, shirks that duty and thus permits the successful campaign of coercion in this case to stand as an attractive model for future officials who want to control what the people say, hear, and think,” wrote Alito. “That is regrettable. What the officials did in this case was more subtle than the ham-handed censorship found to be unconstitutional (in a separate case), but it was no less coercive. And because of the perpetrators’ high positions, it was even more dangerous. It was blatantly unconstitutional, and the country may come to regret the Court’s failure to say so. Officials who read today’s decision…will get the message. If a coercive campaign is carried out with enough sophistication, it may get by. That is not a message this Court should send.”

Barrett wrote that, while she was not opining on the merits of the case, the plaintiffs could not show standing to receive a preliminary injunction. Such an injunction would have immediately barred government abuse going forward, but Barrett held, basically, that just because it did happen doesn’t mean it will happen again and therefore the plaintiffs are not entitled to preliminary (or prospective) relief.

As part of her reasoning, Barrett said that social media platforms did act on their own, at least on occasion, as part of their standard “content moderation” efforts and there was little or no “traceability” back to specific government individuals showing an immediate and direct correlation between a government compliant and a private company action.

Wrong.

First, in the Hines matter, even Barrett noted there was an element of traceability (that was enough for Alito to say she unquestionably had standing to seek relief and, therefore, the case should have been decided on its merits).

Second, companies like Facebook, which in the past have paid huge fines to the government, are in a very precarious position vis-a-vis federal regulation. From “Section 230” protections – a government code that limits their exposure to civil liability when deciding to drop content – to ever-growing threats of further government intervention and potential anti-trust actions, social media companies are internally incentivized to comply with government requests.

In other words, it is not at all a coincidence that a very large percentage of social media execs are “former” government employees and elected officials.

“In sum, the officials wielded potent authority. Their communications with Facebook were virtual demands,” Alito wrote. “And Facebook’s quavering responses to those demands show that it felt a strong need to yield. For these reasons, I would hold that Hines is likely to prevail on her claim that the White House coerced Facebook into censoring her speech.”

In her ruling, Barrett made other significant errors. First, she referred to the “Election Integrity Partnership” (EIP) as a “private entity,” and therefore able to make requests of social media companies.

In fact, the EIP (a group of academic “misinformation specialists”) was morphed into existence by the Department of Homeland Security, specifically its Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, typically known as CISA. The EIP was funded by the government, many of its workers were former (though for many, ‘former’ may be a stretch) federal security agency employees, and the EIP specifically and consistently did the bidding of CISA when asked.

For Barrett to call the EIP a “private entity” shows a complete (intentional?) misunderstanding of the legal landscape and the reality of censorship-industrial complex.

The EIP and other government-sponsored cutout groups that make up the censorship-industrial complex are as independent from the government and the deep state as a foot is independent from a leg.

Barrett also claimed that similar government activities seemed to have lessened in the recent past, making the need for the going-forward injunction unnecessary.

Such a statement is impossible to prove as being true or false – especially after today – but making the assumption that it is even vaguely true, Barrett again misses the mark. If the government is censoring less now than it did two years ago it is because of the massive amount of public attention that has been drawn to the despicable practice by the press and, to be blunt, this very lawsuit.

CISA, etc. did not wake up one morning 18 months ago and say ‘Hey, we better cool it on this” because they suddenly realized they were most likely violating the Constitution; they did so because of the public – and Congressional – pressure.

And now with at least the legal pressure lessened (and an election coming up), to believe that the activities will not increase is naïve to the point of childish – that’s why this future, going forward, prospective injunction was so important.

That didn’t stop the Biden administration from crowing and, presumably, figuring out to ramp up the program for November.

Critics of the decision were loud and voluminous. Appearing on Fox News, legal commentator Jonathan Turley said that “standing issues” are often “used to block meritorious claims” and that the government’s “censorship by surrogate makes a mockery of the First Amendment.”

“The Supreme Court’s decision,” said White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, “helps ensure the Biden administration can continue our important work with technology companies to protect the safety and security of the American people.”

Matt Taibbi, one of the reporters behind the outing of the “Twitter files,” noted that KJP’s statement is astonishingly egregious, but also very telling. She essentially admits government censorship is occurring and claims it is good:

That “important work,” of course, includes White House officials sending emails to companies like Facebook, with notes saying things like ‘Wanted to flag the below tweet and am wondering if we can get moving on having it removed ASAP.’ The Supreme Court sidestepped ruling on the constitutionality of this kind of behavior in the Murthy v. Missouri case with one blunt sentence: “Neither the individual nor the state plaintiffs have established Article III standing to seek an injunction against any defendant.”

“The great War on Terror cop-out, standing — which killed cases like Clapper v. Amnesty International and ACLU v. NSA — reared its head again. In the last two decades, we’ve gotten used to the problem of legal challenges to new government programs being shot down precisely because their secret nature makes collecting evidence or showing standing or injury difficult, and Murthy proved no different.”

Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, an internationally recognized Stanford medical professor, is one of the private plaintiffs in the suit. Bhattacharya is one of the co-authors of the Great Barrington Declaration, which called for a more targeted and rational response to the pandemic response. When it comes to standing, he points directly to an email from then-National Institutes of Health Chief (Tony Fauci’s sort-of boss) Francis Collins, calling on his fellow government employees to engage in a “devastating takedown” of Bhattacharya and the Declaration itself.

Barrett wrote that “Enjoining the Government defendants, therefore, is unlikely to affect the platforms’ content-moderation decisions,” an opinion Bhattacharya was having none of.

“Unlikely to continue to be damaged?” asked Bhattacharya. “How do we know that? And now because of this ruling we have no legal protection from it happening. The court ruled that you can censor until you get caught and even then there will be no penalty.”

Because of the focus on standing, Bhattacharya likened today’s ruling to giving the go-ahead to “broadly censor ideas” as long as you make sure not to traceably censor a specific individual.

A disappointed Bhattacharya has hopes for the future – the case was, again, not decided on its merits and is simply remanded without the injunction back to federal district court in Louisiana – but thinks electeds need to pass laws to stop the censorship.

“At this point, Congress has to act and this needs to be an election issue,” Bhattacharya said.

John Vecchione, New Civil Liberties Alliance Senior Litigation Counsel and the lawyer for four of the five private individuals (including Hines and Bhattacharya) said today’s ruling was “not in accordance with the facts” of the situation.

“There is a level of unreality about this opinion,” Said Vecchione, adding that it reads like a “roadmap for government censors.”

While some in the media have tried to identify this case as having “right-wing” support, Vecchione noted it was originally filed while Donald Trump was president and therefore goes far beyond partisan politics to the heart of the rights of American citizens.

The suit, as noted, goes back to district court and Vecchione says they will continue to gather facts and depositions and even more specific instances of “traceability” – he says they already have enough, but Barrett did not agree – and keep working it through the courts. He said he expects to be back at the Supreme Court sometime in – hopefully – the near future.

“Meanwhile, any government agency, any administration can censor any message they don’t like,” Vecchione said.

And no matter a person’s politics, that is just plain wrong.

Or as Justice Alito wrote:

“For months, high-ranking Government officials placed unrelenting pressure on Facebook to suppress Americans’ free speech. Because the Court unjustifiably refuses to address this serious threat to the First Amendment, I respectfully dissent.”

Republished from the author’s Substack

Author

Thomas Buckley is the former mayor of Lake Elsinore, Cal. a Senior Fellow at the California Policy Center, and a former newspaper reporter.  He is currently the operator of a small communications and planning consultancy and can be reached directly at [email protected]. You can read more of his work at his Substack page.

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armed forces

Judge dismisses Canadian military personnel’s lawsuit against COVID shot mandate

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From LifeSiteNews

By Anthony Murdoch

Associate Judge Catherine Coughlan rejected a lawsuit from more than 300 past and current members of the Canadian military who lost their jobs or were put on leave for not taking the experimental, dangerous COVID shots.

A Canadian federal judge has thrown out a lawsuit filed on behalf of some 330 past and current members of the nation’s military who lost their jobs or were placed on leave for refusing the experimental COVID shots, because she alleged that their lawsuit lacked “evidence” that the jabs were harmful.

The Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) members had sought some $1.3 million in damages from the government for having their charter rights violated due to the military’s 2021 COVID mandates, according to their lawsuit.

In a November 13 ruling, Edmonton-based Associate Judge Catherine Coughlan ruled in favor of the Trudeau government, and thus military’s COVID jab mandate, to strike down the case. Coughlan remarked that the plaintiffs’ case lacked “material facts” along with “evidence” and was filled with “vexatious language.”

READ: Canadian father files $35 million lawsuit against Pfizer over son’s jab-related death

“The only indications of bad faith are found when the pleadings baldly assert that, among other claims, Canada failed to carry out safety and efficacy testing for the vaccines, and that the Directives were premature and ‘promoted the fraudulent use of the biologics’,” she wrote, overlooking reports of thousands of injuries due to the shots in Canada alone.

As a result of the lawsuit being tossed, all plaintiffs are now on the hook to pay some $5,040 out of pocket in legal costs.

As reported by LifeSiteNews in June, documents obtained by LifeSiteNews show that the number of jab injuries in the CAF rose over 800 percent in 2021, with the most being credited to Moderna’s experimental COVID shot.

The CAF members’ lawsuit was filed in June of 2023 and overall sought some $1 million in damages, along with an extra $350,000 in general damages. The lawsuit also had a condition that there be a declaration made that mandating the COVID shots for military members was a violation of their charter rights.

READ: Israeli boy featured in COVID vaccine campaign dies of heart attack at age 8

Under the CAF’s mandate, hundreds of military members were fired, or one could say, purged for not getting the COVID shots. This is in addition to the thousands of public servants fired for not agreeing to take the COVID shots.

The CAF eventually ended its COVID mandate in October 2022, which was months after the federal mandate was lifted, but members are still “strongly encouraged” to take the experimental shot.

The federal government under Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced that its federal COVID shot workplace mandate would be dropped in June 2022, as would the mandate requiring domestic travelers have the shot to board planes and trains.

In November of 2023, a CAF member who spoke to LifeSiteNews under the condition of anonymity observed that the military considers members who refuse the COVID jab “a piece of garbage.”

READ: COVID shots have 200-times higher risk of brain clots than other jabs: new report

In March, LifeSiteNews reported on large personnel losses causing the CAF to consider dropping its remaining requirements altogether.

Although Canada has a Vaccine Injury Support Program (VISP) program, active members of the CAF, as well as veterans, are not eligible for the civilian program. According to Christensen, this leaves many COVID jab-injured CAF members and veterans with no recourse other than Veterans Affairs Canada.

COVID shot mandates, which came from provincial governments with the support of Trudeau’s federal government, split Canadian society. The mRNA shots themselves have been linked to a multitude of negative and often severe side effects, such as heart diseases, stroke, and death, including in children.

The shots also have connections to cell lines derived from aborted babies. As a result, many Catholics and other Christians refused to take them.

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Brownstone Institute

The Most Devastating Report So Far

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From the Brownstone Institute

By Jay BhattacharyaJayanta Bhattacharya 

The House report on HHS Covid propaganda is devastating. The Biden administration spent almost $1 billion to push falsehoods about Covid vaccines, boosters, and masks on the American people. If a pharma company had run the campaign, it would have been fined out of existence.

HHS engaged a PR firm, the Fors Marsh Group (FMG), for the propaganda campaign. The main goal was to increase Covid vax uptake. The strategy: 1. Exaggerate Covid mortality risk 2. Downplay the fact that there was no good evidence that the Covid vax stops transmission.

The propaganda campaign extended beyond vax uptake and included exaggerating mask efficacy and pushing for social distancing and school closures.

Ultimately, since the messaging did not match reality, the campaign collapsed public trust in public health.

The PR firm (FMG) drew most of its faulty science from the CDC’s “guidance,” which ignored the FDA’s findings on the vaccine’s limitations, as well as scientific findings from other countries that contradicted CDC groupthink.

The report details the CDC’s mask flip-flopping through the years. It’s especially infuriating to recall the CDC’s weird, anti-scientific, anti-human focus on masking toddlers with cloth masks into 2022.

President Biden’s Covid advisor Ashish K. Jha waited until Dec. 2022 (right after leaving government service) to tell the country that “[t]here is no study in the world that shows that masks work that well.” What took him so long?

In 2021, former CDC director, Rochelle Walensky rewrote CDC guidance on social distancing at the behest of the national teachers’ union, guaranteeing that schools would remain closed to in-person learning for many months.

During this period, the PR firm FMG put out ads telling parents that schools would close unless kids masked up, stayed away from friends, and got Covid-vaccinated.

In March 2021, even as the CDC told the American people that the vaxxed did not need to mask, the PR firm ran ads saying that masks were still needed, even for the vaxxed. “It’s not time to ease up” we were told, in the absence of evidence any of that did any good.

In 2021, to support the Biden/Harris administration’s push for vax mandates, the PR firm pushed the false idea that the vax stopped Covid transmission. When people started getting “breakthrough” infections, public trust in public health collapsed.

Later, when the FDA approved the vax for 12 to 15-year-old kids, the PR firm told parents that schools could open in fall 2021 only if they got their kids vaccinated. These ads never mentioned side effects like myocarditis due to the vax.

HHS has scrubbed the propaganda ads from this era from its web pages. It’s easy to see why. They are embarrassing. They tell kids, in effect, that they should treat other kids like biohazards unless they are vaccinated.

When the Delta variant arrived, the PR firm doubled down on fear-mongering, masking, and social distancing.

In September 2021, CDC director Walensky overruled the agency’s external experts to recommend the booster to all adults rather than just the elderly. The director’s action was “highly unusual” and went beyond the FDA’s approval of the booster for only the elderly.

The PR campaign and the CDC persistently overestimated the mortality risk of Covid infection in kids to scare parents into vaccinating their children with the Covid vax.

In Aug. 2021, the military imposed its Covid vax mandate, leading to 8,300 servicemen being discharged. Since 2023, the DOD has been trying to get the discharged servicemen to reenlist. What harm has been done to American national security by the vax mandate?

The Biden/Harris administration imposed the OSHA, CMS, and military vax mandates, even though the CDC knew that the Delta variant evaded vaccine immunity. The PR campaign studiously avoided informing Americans about waning vaccine efficacy in the face of variants.

The propaganda campaign hired celebrities and influencers to “persuade” children to get the Covid vax.

I think if a celebrity is paid to advertise a faulty product, that celebrity should be partially liable if the product harms some people.

In the absence of evidence, the propaganda campaign ran ads telling parents that the vaccine would prevent their kids from getting Long Covid.

With the collapse in public trust in the CDC, parents have begun to question all CDC advice. Predictably, the HHS propaganda campaign has led to a decline in the uptake of routine childhood vaccines.

The report makes several recommendations, including formally defining the CDC’s core mission to focus on disease prevention, forcing HHS propaganda to abide by the FDA’s product labeling rules, and revamping the process of evaluating vaccine safety.

Probably the most important recommendation: HHS should never again adopt a policy of silencing dissenting scientists in an attempt to create an illusion of consensus in favor of CDC groupthink.

You can find a copy of the full House report here. The HHS must take its findings seriously if there is any hope for public health to regain public.

Author

Jay Bhattacharya

Dr. Jay Bhattacharya is a physician, epidemiologist and health economist. He is Professor at Stanford Medical School, a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economics Research, a Senior Fellow at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research, a Faculty Member at the Stanford Freeman Spogli Institute, and a Fellow at the Academy of Science and Freedom. His research focuses on the economics of health care around the world with a particular emphasis on the health and well-being of vulnerable populations. Co-Author of the Great Barrington Declaration.

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