The Liberty Justice Center sued President Joe Biden and Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, as well as Facebook and Twitter, for colluding to violate an American citizen’s First Amendment rights, Reclaim the Net reported.
The conservative legal watchdog represents Justin Hart, the chief data analyst at RationalGround.com.
Hart accused the Biden administration of colluding with Big Tech companies to censor information related to COVID-19, masks and lockdowns.
Hart said his website provides data-driven suggestions to help “companies, public policy officials, and even parents gauge the impact of COVID-19,” allowing them to “move forward during this challenging pandemic.”
The complaint, dated Aug. 31, alleged that the federal government “admits to conspiring with social media companies to censor messages with which it disagrees.”
The lawsuit argued that this viewpoint discrimination, in which the federal government directs Big Tech companies to censor views that challenge a certain narrative, violated the First Amendment.
In the complaint, the Liberty Justice Center asked the District Court for the Southern District of California to declare the actions of the Big Tech companies and public officials unconstitutional and to “permanently enjoin them from monitoring, flagging, and deleting social media posts based on the viewpoints the posts espouse.”
Facebook suspended Hart’s accounts on July 13 when he posted a graphic with scientific data and the headline, “Masking Children is Impractical and Not Backed by Research or Real World Data.”
Numerous studies support Hart’s message, but the Biden administration and the Big Tech companies do not want that data to spread.
Mainstream outlets like the New York Post have agreed that no studies have demonstrated the ability of masks to prevent the spread of respiratory illnesses.
Several studies and news outlets have also noted that COVID-19 poses an insignificant threat to nearly all healthy children.
“Study after study repeatedly shows that children are safer than vaccinated adults and that the masks people actually wear don’t do much good,” the New York Post reported.
After Hart posted the infographic, Facebook suspended his account for three days with the message: “This post goes against our standards on misinformation that could cause
physical harm, so only you can see it.”
The infographic contained statements, with links to scientific studies, that challenged America’s public health tyranny—including assertions that “improper masking is common and unsanitary,” that some masks “contain toxic chemicals,” and that “masks can hinder speech development in children.”
Twitter suspended Hart’s account on July 18 when he posted the CDC’s own data about masking.
“So the CDC just reported that 70% of those who came down with #COVID19
symptoms had been wearing a mask,” Hart wrote. “We know that masks don’t protect you … but at some point you have to wonder if they are PART of the problem.”
Twitter informed Hart about the ban by stating that he violated “the policy on spreading misleading and potentially harmful information related to COVID-19.”
Within a week of these suspensions, the Biden administration admitted that it told social media companies to ban accounts that challenge the federal government’s COVID-19 narrative.
“We’re asking [our technology companies] to consistently take action against misinformation super-spreaders on their platforms,” Murthy said on July 15.
White House press secretary Jen Psaki even stated that the federal government has a team that tells Big Tech companies which posts and accounts to suspend.
“We’ve increased disinformation research and tracking within the Surgeon General’s office,” she said. “We’re flagging problematic posts for Facebook that spread disinformation.”
