U.S. Supreme Court Won’t Hear Children’s Health Defense Censorship Case Against Facebook
The U.S. Supreme Court today denied Children’s Health Defense’s (CHD) petition to hear its case against Meta over the company’s collusion with government officials to censor CHD content on Facebook.
The U.S. Supreme Court today denied Children’s Health Defense’s (CHD) petition to hear its censorship case against Meta, the parent company of Facebook.
CHD sued Meta in August 2020 and filed an amended complaint in November 2020, alleging that government actors partnered with Facebook to censor CHD’s speech — particularly speech related to vaccines and COVID-19 — that should have been protected under the First Amendment.
The company deplatformed CHD from Facebook and Instagram in August 2022 and has not reinstated the accounts.
The 9th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals in August 2024 sided with Facebook, ruling that Meta’s censorship was the result of the company’s policy rather than government coercion.
On Jan. 6, CHD petitioned the Supreme Court to hear the case. Less than 24 hours later, Meta Founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced the company was ending its third-party “fact-checking” program — a program it had used to censor and later deplatform CHD and others.
CHD CEO Mary Holland, who said CHD is “deeply disappointed” that the Supreme Court declined to hear the case, told The Defender:
“It has been obvious since the time the case was filed in August 2020 that Facebook and its allied media worked hand in glove with the federal public health authorities to censor CHD and to promote government-sponsored false information on COVID and other vaccine issues.”
CHD General Counsel Kim Mack Rosenberg echoed Holland’s disappointment. She said:
“We at CHD believe strongly that consumers of media have a right to hear a variety of viewpoints and sources and that those like CHD that communicate information that may challenge the prevailing narrative have a right to be heard.
“These are fundamental hallmarks of democracy, and it is deeply disheartening that the Supreme Court chose not to address this critical issue.”
National healthcare and constitutional practice attorney Rick Jaffe, who is not involved in the case but represents CHD in other cases, said, “In my view, the First Amendment cannot be so easily evaded by outsourcing censorship, but that fight will have to continue in another case.”
Attorney Roger Teich, who is representing CHD in its case against Meta, declined to immediately comment on the Supreme Court’s decision.
It’s unknown if and how many justices may have disagreed
In today’s announcement, the Supreme Court did not explain why it declined CHD’s petition.
That’s not surprising, Mack Rosenberg said. “Very occasionally, you see a more detailed response to a petition, but that’s the exception, not the rule.”
Each year, the U.S. Supreme Court hears about 80 of the roughly 7,000 to 8,000 cases it’s petitioned to hear, according to its website.
The court did not say whether any justices dissented in the CHD case against Meta. No justice wrote a dissenting opinion, but that doesn’t mean no one dissented. Such a written dissent would be rare but not without precedent, Holland said.
Mack Rosenberg said the Supreme Court denies a petition if fewer than four of the nine justices vote to grant it, based on the “Rule of Four.”
“The decision to deny is not a ruling on the merits of the case and does not require a unanimous vote among the justices,” she said.
In other words, it is unknown whether all — or simply the majority — of the Supreme Court justices supported the decision to reject CHD’s case.
Holland said that although she believes “the Supreme Court did not get this right,” the problem the case sought to address has “lessened.”
“The censorship-industrial complex agreements of the past seem to have gone by the wayside, at least for now, and for that I am grateful,” she said.
Meta has not reinstated CHD’s Facebook and Instagram accounts, which combined, reached millions of readers.
In January, following Zuckerberg’s announcement that Facebook was discontinuing its fact-checking program, CHD launched a petition asking him to restore its Facebook and Instagram accounts. The petition, still active, has 22,462 signatures.
Meta did not immediately respond when The Defender asked if and when the company plans to reinstate CHD on its platforms.
Defendants in CHD’s lawsuit included Facebook’s parent company, Meta, Zuckerberg, and “fact-checking” firms used by Meta Science Feedback, the Poynter Institute and its PolitiFact website.
Supreme Court showed earlier sign of interest in the case
The Supreme Court in February signaled it was seriously considering hearing the case, according to Jaffe. After Meta waived its right to file a response to CHD’s petition, the court on Feb. 27 directed Meta to file a reply by March 31.
Jaffe called the court’s move “unusual” and said it “confirms that the petition raised serious constitutional questions.”
Holland at that time said:
“We see this as a good sign. When we asked the Supreme Court to hear our case, Meta declined to file a reply, even though it had the right to do so. This latest move by the Supreme Court … suggests the court has questions that it believes Meta should address.”
Jaffe also noted that although the Supreme Court declined to hear CHD’s case against Meta, it has shown increased concern about viewpoint-based censorship in other cases, including the recent Chiles v. Salazar case about whether a law that censors conversations between counselors and their clients based on the viewpoints expressed violates the First Amendment.
“I think the legal tide is turning,” he said. “So this is not the end of the road, but one step in a long campaign to restore First Amendment protections in the digital age.”
According to Mack Rosenberg, there’s an urgent need to do so since censorship causes “widespread and insidious damage.” She said:
“Without outlets for a variety of viewpoints to share information, people don’t even know what they are not hearing and this impacts their ability to think critically and determine their own opinions … If all one hears is the prevailing narrative, that may be all one knows.”
Related articles in The Defender
Supreme Court Orders Meta to Respond to CHD Petition in Censorship Case
Without Warning, Facebook, Instagram De-Platform Children’s Health Defense Accounts
We Were Censored By Meta — We’re Taking Them to the Supreme Court
Zuckerberg: White House Would ‘Scream’ and ‘Curse’ at Facebook Staff to Remove COVID Content
When it comes to "public media," we, the people, have created this monster. It is called harmful Internet use (HIU). HIU is particularly harmful for children: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37416490/
and
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/article-abstract/2835481
HIU is silently destroying our children. Only a handful of researchers are aware of how quickly it goes.
This is astonishing (or it should be) because this case runs to the core of the First Amendment. USGinc. is using private corporations at every level to avoid transparency and our Constitution. This is a deliberate strategy by the govt and its corporate partners to control people and leave us without recourse to justice. In any other era this would clearly be labeled fascism.
As planned, people died from the lack of true information. The abrogation of our human rights during covid has been too often approved by the judiciary (with real and important exceptions). The elimination of the rule of law and our human rights under a fascist partnership is accelerating. I sometimes wonder if members of the SC think they will be exempted from the dystopia they are helping to create. As most of them took the covid death shot, clearly they are not exempt but somehow seem to think they are.
This was a very clear case with clear evidence of collusion to avoid honoring human rights. They should have taken this on and they should have shut down the ability of any govt. entity to lie to the people and take away human rights. We are in very bad shape in this nation.