From LifeSiteNews

By Suzanne Burdick Ph.D., The Defender

The 5th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals has heard oral arguments in the landmark censorship case,  Kennedy et al. v. Biden et al.

The hearing focused on two points, Kim Mack Rosenberg, Children’s Health Defense (CHD) general counsel, told The Defender. First, the 5th Circuit is considering whether to uphold a lower court’s August decision that two of the three plaintiffs – Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and CHD – have legal standing to bring the suit.

Second, it’s considering whether to uphold the Lousiana court’s injunction, which would prohibit the Biden administration from coordinating with social media companies to censor Kennedy and CHD’s social media posts until the lawsuit is settled.

The case – brought by Kennedy, CHD, and news consumer Connie Sampognaro – alleges that President Joe Biden, Dr. Anthony Fauci, and other top administration officials and federal agencies “waged a systematic, concerted campaign” to compel the nation’s three largest social media companies to censor constitutionally protected speech.

During the October 8 hearing, Jed Rubenfeld ­– Yale law professor and attorney for the plaintiffs – told judges, “District court called this the most massive attack on free speech in this nation’s history, and it would be shocking if no plaintiff in the country had standing to challenge it.”

Standing is the legal doctrine that requires plaintiffs to be able to show they have suffered direct and concrete injuries and that those injuries could be resolved in court.

The issue of standing shut down another related government censorship case, Murthy v. Missouri. The plaintiffs in Murthy v. Missouri ­– the states of Missouri and Arkansas, Drs. Jay Bhattacharya,  Martin Kulldorff, and Aaron Kheriaty, The Gateway Pundit’s Jim Hoft and health activist Jill Hines – argued that the censorship they experienced on social media could be tied to government action and that they were likely to be censored in the future. In June, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled the plaintiffs didn’t have standing to bring their case.

The Murthy – originally Missouri et al. v. Biden et al. – and Kennedy v. Biden cases were consolidated because they shared common legal and factual issues. This allowed them to share processes, such as discovery of evidence. However, they continued to be heard and ruled on separately.

The plaintiffs in Kennedy v. Biden are much more likely to be able to prove standing than the Murthy v. Missouri plaintiffs, Mack Rosenberg said:

With the Supreme Court’s decision in Murthy v. Missouri in the forefront on the issue of standing, we believe that the plaintiffs in our action have clearly demonstrated standing more than sufficient to meet the requirements the Supreme Court described in Murthy in June.

Mack Rosenberg said there is clear evidence that plaintiffs Kennedy and CHD were specific targets of censorship and that they continue to be censored. “CHD in particular continues to be deplatformed from major social media sites with no end in sight.”

She said the facts “demonstrate that the injunction issued by Judge Doughty was appropriate given the circumstances and the government’s continued actions.”

Legal battle has dragged on for over a year

Tuesday’s hearing was the latest development in a class action lawsuit brought by Kennedy, CHD, and Sampognaro on behalf of more than 80 percent of U.S. adults who access news from online news aggregators and social media companies, primarily Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter (now X).

The suit was filed on March 24, 2023, in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Louisiana.

The case alleged that key officials and federal agencies in the Biden administration violated the plaintiffs’ First Amendment rights by censoring online speech disfavored by the government.

According to the complaint, “the federal government’s censorship campaign has repeatedly, systematically, and very successfully targeted constitutionally protected speech on the basis of its content and viewpoint.”

Nearly a year later, U.S. District Judge Terry Doughty issued a preliminary injunction prohibiting key Biden administration officials and agencies from coercing or significantly encouraging social media platforms to suppress or censor online content containing protected free speech.

However, Doughty stayed the injunction until the U.S. Supreme Court ruled on a similar injunction in the Murthy v. Missouri case.

After the Supreme Court on June 26 ruled in favor of the Biden administration in Murthy v. Missouri, Doughty on July 9 denied two motions by lawyers for the Biden administration seeking to overturn the preliminary injunction.

Less than 24 hours later, Biden administration lawyers filed an emergency motion with the 5th Circuit, seeking to block the injunction.

The 5th Circuit on July 25 sent the case back to the Louisiana District Court to decide if Kennedy, CHD, and Sampognaro have standing to bring the suit. The 5th Circuit also stayed the injunction while the case was being revisited by the District Court.

The District Court on August 20 gave the plaintiffs the green light to bring their suit, ruling that Kennedy and CHD had standing. Doughty concluded that plaintiff Sampognaro does not have standing.

Lawyers disagree on whether plaintiffs have standing

In Tuesday’s hearing, U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) attorney Daniel Tenny argued on behalf of the defendants, saying that the Murthy v. Missouri decision “foreclosed” the plaintiffs’ theories on why the plaintiffs have standing.

Rubenfeld disagreed, saying that Kennedy v. Biden plaintiffs differ in key ways from the Murthy plaintiffs. First, unlike the Murthy plaintiffs, the Kennedy v. Biden plaintiffs have a “specific causation finding,” meaning there is clear evidence that “government defendants, through threats, caused the deplatforming and censorship that they suffered.”

Second, the Kennedy v. Biden plaintiffs have evidence of ongoing injury, not just past injury:

CHD’s deplatforming – which happened a couple of years ago – is exactly the same right now, unchanged in status as it was then. In other words, the government defendants are directly responsible for the injury that CHD is currently suffering.

“Number three,” Rubenfeld said, “we have specific evidence of, in the event of a favorable ruling from this court, a significant increase in the likelihood of our plaintiffs receiving relief.”

“That’s the established test for redressability,” he said. Redressability means that the plaintiffs’ alleged injuries are likely to be redressed if the court grants the relief the plaintiffs are seeking.

Right now there is zero likelihood that CHD will get relief, Rubenfeld said. “CHD has been litigating against Facebook for years. They have not reinstated them.”

If the 5th Circuit issues a ruling that Facebook’s actions were likely unconstitutional and that will likely be unconstitutional if Facebook keeps on doing it, “that changes [Facebook’s] incentive and that increases the likelihood that [CHD] will be reinstated.”

In their brief, plaintiffs’ attorneys also argued that Sampognaro, who is potentially immunocompromised, has what’s called “right-to-listen standing” because she needs access to accurate information about COVID-19 and possible treatments, and the censorship has obstructed that access.

Tenny urged the court to continue blocking the District Court’s injunction. Rubenfeld argued the injunction is needed because U.S. governmental agencies are “still today” trying to influence social media platforms “to suppress speech that they deem, they call misinformation.”

He added, “But we have seen over and over again that what they call misinformation often doesn’t turn out to be misinformation and turns out to be protected speech.”

The DOJ declined The Defender’s request for comment on October 8’s arguments.

This article was originally published by The Defender – Children’s Health Defense’s News & Views Website under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Please consider subscribing to The Defender or donating to Children’s Health Defense.

From LifeSiteNews

By Anthony Murdoch

The free speech advocate said the College of Psychologists of Ontario mistakenly thought he could ‘be bought’ after losing his court appeal challenging that he submit to social media training to keep his license.

Best-selling Canadian author and clinical psychologist Dr. Jordan Peterson says his regulatory college offered him a deal to “be bought” in which the legal fees owed to them after losing his court challenge could be waived but only if he agreed to quit his job as a psychologist.

Peterson, who gained fame for his vigorous defense of free speech, announced the offer, as he put it, “to be bought” from the College of Psychologists of Ontario (CPO) in an opinion piece posted by the National Post on October 11. He said that lawyers from the CPO told him that “a settlement offer might be possible” if he resigned, but doing so would bar him from being able to practice in the province.

He noted the CPO’s “first offer was (get this — and I still can’t believe it): ‘If Dr. Peterson agrees to resign, we would be willing to forgo the legal costs the court ruled he owes us!’”

Peterson observed that the CPO’s “opening gambit was based on the assumptions (1) that I could be bought and (2) that I could be bought cheaply.”

“The first was truly insulting, as well as preposterous: If cost alone was going to stop me, it would have happened long ago,” he wrote.

“The second was ironically laughable, and an indication of their ignorance regarding what is at stake here: If I was for sale — and I am not — it would be for a hell of a lot more than the court costs that the Supreme Court deemed me liable for when my appeal was rejected.”

Peterson said that he is already in “over my head for a lot more than that on the expenditure side alone.”

“In addition, I have enough stable sources of income now arrayed around me such that the amount in question is not a relevant determinant of my behaviour, as the college tyrannocrats should have realized, had they done an iota of necessary homework.”

Peterson observed that one of the reasons the CPO has begun to negotiate with him over the fees owed is because it is now “backed in a corner.”

In August 2023, Peterson lost an appeal against the CPO when they mandated that he undergo social media “training” to keep his license after he made posts on X, formerly Twitter, criticizing Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and LGBT activists, and specifically, the mutilation of children. He was then ordered to pay $25,000 to the CPO.

Last month, as reported by LifeSiteNews, Peterson agreed to accept the CPO’s social media “training,” saying he was doing so to defend free speech for all Canadians.

This came after a ruling in August by the Supreme Court of Canada, which refused to hear Peterson’s appeal to the CPO regarding the threat of losing his license unless he submit to the social media “training.”

‘God only knows how it will all end’

Peterson is a professor emeritus of psychology at the University of Toronto and has gotten into trouble from regulatory bodies for repeatedly calling out the “trans-butchery of minor children” as a “crime against humanity.”

He has also been a vocal critic of Canadian health and government officials for promoting COVID mandates and jabs as “safe.”

Regarding the CPO’s offer, Peterson said that after he was ordered by the court to undergo social media “training,” he had asked for the names of those who would be ready to re-educate” him. However, the names of the so-called “social media experts” tasked with the re-“education” were redacted when he received them.

“One problem remained, and a serious one, indeed, practically speaking: the very lines in the document that contained the identifying information of the experts (names, email addresses, professional standing, and telephone numbers) had been redacted,” he wrote.

“Note also that since it is now early October, the college only has about seven weeks to straighten out the mess they created around themselves, without violating their own rules, and to repair me one way or another, in the hopefully permanent manner they are devoutly hoping to manage.”

The CPO’s mandate that Peterson undergo social media “training” must be done by November.

In concluding the opinion piece, Peterson noted, “God only knows how it will all end.”

“But it certainly appears, as of the current moment, that the much-vaunted and much-moralized-publicly-about re-education efforts of the Ontario College of Psychologists and Behaviour Analysts have been brought to a shuddering and shameful halt, not least because of the utter indefensibility of their own position,” he wrote.

Peterson has warned Canadian professionals to “wake up” to the rise of cancel culture.

“Wake up, citizens: professionals are now required to hold their tongue if they believe anything politically verboten. For all you leaning to the left – sometimes validly: these precedents will eventually be weaponized by those who stand opposed to you,” he posted.