Professional Documents
Culture Documents
JILL HINES,
JIM HOFT,
Plaintiffs,
v.
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DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE;
DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND
SECURITY;
CYBERSECURITY AND
INFRASTRUCTURE SECURITY
AGENCY;
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Defendants.
1. In 1783, George Washington warned that if “the Freedom of Speech may be taken away,”
then “dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep, to the Slaughter.” George Washington, Address
to the Officers of the Army (March 15, 1783). The freedom of speech in the United States now
faces one of its greatest assaults by federal government officials in the Nation’s history.
2. A private entity violates the First Amendment “if the government coerces or induces it to
take action the government itself would not be permitted to do, such as censor expression of a
lawful viewpoint.” Biden v. Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia Univ., 141 S. Ct. 1220,
1226 (2021) (Thomas, J., concurring). “The government cannot accomplish through threats of
adverse government action what the Constitution prohibits it from doing directly.” Id.
3. That is exactly what has occurred over the past several years, beginning with express and
implied threats from government officials and culminating in the Biden Administration’s open and
explicit censorship programs. Having threatened and cajoled social-media platforms for years to
censor viewpoints and speakers disfavored by the Left, senior government officials in the
Executive Branch have moved into a phase of open collusion with social-media companies to
suppress disfavored speakers, viewpoints, and content on social-media platforms under the
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4. The aggressive censorship that Defendants have procured constitutes government action
for at least five reasons: (1) absent federal intervention, common-law and statutory doctrines, as
well as voluntary conduct and natural free-market forces, would have restrained the emergence of
censorship and suppression of speech of disfavored speakers, content, and viewpoint on social
media; and yet (2) through Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act (CDA) and other
actions, the federal government subsidized, fostered, encouraged, and empowered the creation of
a small number of massive social-media companies with disproportionate ability to censor and
suppress speech on the basis of speaker, content, and viewpoint; (3) such inducements as Section
230 and other legal benefits (such as the absence of antitrust enforcement) constitute an immensely
valuable benefit to social-media platforms and incentive to do the bidding of federal officials; (4)
aggressively threatened to remove these legal benefits and impose other adverse consequences on
social-media platforms if they do not aggressively censor and suppress disfavored speakers,
content, and viewpoints on their platforms; and (5) Defendants herein, colluding and coordinating
with each other, have also directly coordinated and colluded with social-media platforms to
identify disfavored speakers, viewpoints, and content and thus have procured the actual censorship
and suppression of the freedom of speech. These factors are both individually and collectively
sufficient to establish government action in the censorship and suppression of social-media speech,
especially given the inherent power imbalance: not only do the government actors here have the
power to penalize noncompliant companies, but they have threatened to exercise that authority.
constitutional tradition stands against the idea that we need Oceania’s Ministry of Truth.” United
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States v. Alvarez, 567 U.S. 709, 728 (2012) (plurality op.). Likewise, our constitutional tradition
stands against the idea that we need a “Disinformation Governance Board” within our federal
domestic-security apparatus.
6. Just last week, email correspondence between the CDC, the Census Bureau, and major
social-media platforms including Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube was released that reveals yet
7. As a direct result of these actions, there has been an unprecedented rise of censorship and
viewpoints and speakers have been unlawfully and unconstitutionally silenced in the modern
public square. These actions gravely threaten the fundamental right of free speech and free
discourse for virtually all citizens in Missouri, Louisiana, and America, both on social media and
elsewhere. And they have directly impacted individual Plaintiffs in this case, all of whom have
8. This Court has subject-matter jurisdiction because the federal claims arise under the
9. Venue is proper in this District under 28 U.S.C. § 1391(b)(2) because a substantial part of
the events or omissions giving rise to the claim occurred in this District.
PARTIES
A. Plaintiffs.
10. Plaintiff State of Missouri is a sovereign State of the United States of America. Missouri
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11. Eric S. Schmitt is the duly elected Attorney General of Missouri. Under Missouri law, he
has authority to bring suit on behalf of the State of Missouri to vindicate the State’s sovereign,
quasi-sovereign, and proprietary interests, and to protect the constitutional rights of its citizens.
12. Plaintiff State of Louisiana is a sovereign State of the United States of America. Louisiana
13. Jeffrey M. Landry is the duly elected Attorney General of Louisiana. Under Louisiana
law, he has authority to bring suit on behalf of the State of Louisiana to vindicate the State’s
sovereign, quasi-sovereign, and proprietary interests, and to protect the constitutional rights of its
citizens.
14. Missouri and Louisiana, and their agencies and officials, have a sovereign and proprietary
interest in receiving free flow of information in public discourse on social-media platforms. This
includes an interest in preventing the States, their agencies, and their political subdivisions from
suffering direct censorship on social-media platforms when they post their own content. In
addition, Missouri and Louisiana, and their agencies and officials, are constantly engaged in the
work of formulating, enacting, advancing and enforcing public policies, and formulating messages
and communications related to such policies, and they frequently and necessarily rely on the flow
of speech and information on social media to inform public-policy decisions. Further, information
and ideas shared on social media frequently are repeated in, and impact and influence, public
discourse outside of social media, which Missouri and Louisiana, and their agencies and officials,
15. Missouri and Louisiana further have a sovereign interest in ensuring that the fundamental
values reflected in their own Constitutions and laws, and the fundamental rights guaranteed to their
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citizens, are not subverted by the unconstitutional actions of federal officials and those acting in
concert with them. Missouri’s Constitution provides the highest level of protection for the freedom
of speech, protecting it in even more expansive language than that in the First Amendment, and
Louisiana’s Constitution provides similar protection for free-speech rights. Defendants’ unlawful
subversion of Missourians’ and Louisianans’ fundamental rights and liberties under state law
violates both the state and federal Constitutions, and it injures Missouri’s and Louisiana’s
sovereign interests in advancing their own fundamental laws and fundamental policies favoring
16. In addition, Missouri and Louisiana have a quasi-sovereign interest in protecting the free-
speech rights of the vast majority of their citizens, who constitute “a sufficiently substantial
segment of its population.” Alfred L. Snapp & Son, Inc. v. Puerto Rico, ex rel., Barez, 458 U.S.
592, 607 (1982). This falls within Missouri’s and Louisiana’s “quasi-sovereign interest in the
health and well-being—both physical and economic—of its residents in general.” Id. This injury
“suffices to give the State standing to sue as parens patriae” because “the injury” to Missourians’
and Louisianans’ free-speech and free-expression rights “is one that the State … would likely
attempt to address”—indeed, Missouri and Louisiana have addressed, see, e.g., MO. CONST., art.
I, § 8; LA. CONST., art. I, § 7—“through [their] sovereign lawmaking powers.” Alfred L. Snapp,
17. Further, Missouri and Louisiana “ha[ve] an interest in securing observance of the terms
under which [they] participate[] in the federal system.” Alfred L. Snapp, 458 U.S. at 607–08. This
means bringing suit to “ensur[e] that the State and its residents are not excluded from the benefits
that are to flow from participation in the federal system.” Id. at 608. The rights secured by the
First Amendment, and analogous state constitutional provisions, are foremost among the “benefits
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that are to flow from participation in the federal system.” Id. Missouri and Louisiana “have an
interest, independent of the benefits that might accrue to any particular individual, in assuring that
the benefits of the federal system are not denied to its general population.” Id. Missouri and
18. Plaintiff Dr. Jayanta Bhattacharya is a former Professor of Medicine and current Professor
of Health Policy at Stanford University School of Medicine and a research associate at the National
Bureau of Economic Research. He is also Director of Stanford’s Center for Demography and
Economics of Health and Aging. He holds an M.D. and Ph.D. from Stanford University. He has
published 161 scholarly articles in peer-reviewed journals in the fields of medicine, economics,
health policy, epidemiology, statistics, law, and public health, among others. His research has been
cited in the peer-reviewed scientific literature more than 13,000 times. He was one of the co-
restrictions, which was co-signed by over 930,000 people, including over 62,000 scientists and
healthcare professionals. Dr. Bhattacharya and his audiences have experienced significant
censorship and suppression of his speech on social-media caused by Defendants, as detailed in his
previously filed Declaration, ECF No. 10-3, which is attached as Exhibit C and incorporated by
reference herein.
19. Plaintiff Dr. Martin Kulldorff is an epidemiologist, a biostatistician and a former Professor
of Medicine at Harvard University and Brigham and Women’s Hospital, from 2015 to November
2021. Before that, he was Professor of Population Medicine at Harvard University from 2011 to
2015. He holds a Ph.D. from Cornell University. He has published over 200 scholarly articles in
peer-reviewed journals in the fields of public health, epidemiology, biostatistics and medicine,
among others. His research has been cited in the peer-reviewed scientific literature more than
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25,000 times. He was one of the co-authors of the Great Barrington Declaration, a statement
people, including over 62,000 scientists and healthcare professionals. Dr. Kulldorff and his
audiences have experienced significant censorship and suppression of his speech on social-media
caused by Defendants, as detailed in his previously filed Declaration, ECF No. 10-4, which is
20. Plaintiff Dr. Aaron Kheriaty earned his M.D. from Georgetown University, and completed
residency training in psychiatry at the University of California Irvine. For many years, he was a
Professor of Psychiatry at UCI School of Medicine and the Director of the Medical Ethics Program
at UCI Health, where he chaired the ethics committee. He also chaired the ethics committee at the
California Department of State Hospitals for several years. He is now a Fellow at the Ethics &
Public Policy Center in Washington, DC, where he directs the program on Bioethics and American
Democracy. He has authored numerous books and articles for professional and lay audiences on
bioethics, social science, psychiatry, religion, and culture. His work has been published in the
Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, Arc Digital, The New Atlantis, Public Discourse, City
Journal, and First Things. He has conducted print, radio, and television interviews on bioethics
topics with The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, CNN, Fox News, and NPR. He
maintains social-media accounts, including the Twitter account @akheriaty, which has over
158,000 followers. Dr. Kheriaty and his audiences have experienced significant censorship and
suppression of his speech on social-media caused by Defendants, as detailed in his previously filed
Declaration, ECF No. 10-7, which is attached as Exhibit G incorporated by reference herein.
21. Plaintiff Jim Hoft is the founder, owner, and operator of the popular news website The
Gateway Pundit. He resides in St. Louis, Missouri. The Gateway Pundit is one of the most popular
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conservative news sites in the country, with over 2.5 million web searches per day. Mr. Hoft
maintains and operates The Gateway Pundit’s social-media accounts, including a Facebook
account with over 650,000 followers, an Instagram account with over 205,000 followers, and (until
its recent permanent suspension) a Twitter account with over 400,000 followers. Mr. Hoft and his
including of his speech on COVID-19 issues and election security issues, as set forth in his
Declaration, ECF No. 10-5, which is attached as Exhibit E and incorporated by reference herein.
22. Plaintiff Jill Hines is a resident of Louisiana. She is the Co-Director of Health Freedom
Louisiana, a consumer and human rights advocacy organization. She also launched, in 2020, a
grassroots effort called Reopen Louisiana. She maintains social-media accounts for both Health
Freedom Louisiana and Reopen Louisiana with approximately 13,000 followers. Ms. Hines and
her audiences have experienced extensive government-induced censorship of her speech on social
media, including her speech related to COVID-19 restrictions, as set forth in her Declaration, ECF
B. Defendants.
23. Defendant Joseph R. Biden, Jr., is President of the United States. He is sued in his official
capacity.
24. Defendant Karine Jean-Pierre is White House Press Secretary. She is sued in her official
capacity. She is substituted for her predecessor, former White House Press Secretary Jennifer
Rene Psaki.
25. Defendant Vivek H. Murthy is Surgeon General of the United States. He is sued in his
official capacity.
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26. Defendant Xavier Becerra is Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services.
27. Defendant Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is a Cabinet-level agency
28. Defendant Anthony Fauci is the Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious
Diseases (NIAID) and Chief Medical Advisor to the President. He is sued in his official capacity.
29. Defendant National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) is a federal
30. Defendant Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is a federal agency under the
31. Defendant Carol Y. Crawford is Chief of the Digital Media Branch of the Division of
Public Affairs within the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. She is sued in her official
capacity.
32. Defendant United States Census Bureau, a.k.a. Bureau of the Census (“Census Bureau”),
33. Defendant Jennifer Shopkorn is Senior Advisor for Communications with the U.S. Census
36. Defendant Robert Silvers is Under Secretary of the Office of Strategy, Policy, and Plans,
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37. Defendant Samantha Vinograd is the Senior Counselor for National Security within the
38. Defendant Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is a Cabinet-level agency within the
39. Defendant Jen Easterly is the Director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security
Agency within the Department of Homeland Security. She is sued in her official capacity.
40. Defendant Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) is an agency within
the Department of Homeland Security that is charged with protecting the United States’
41. Defendant Gina McCarthy is the White House National Climate Advisor. She is sued in
42. Defendant Nina Jankowicz is the director of the newly constituted “Disinformation
Governance Board” within the Department of Homeland Security. She is sued in her official
capacity.
GENERAL ALLEGATIONS
43. The First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution states that “Congress shall make no law …
44. Article I, § 8 of the Missouri Constitution provides “[t]hat no law shall be passed impairing
the freedom of speech, no matter by what means communicated: that every person shall be free to
say, write or publish, or otherwise communicate whatever he will on any subject, being responsible
for all abuses of that liberty….” MO. CONST. art. I, § 8. Article I, § 7 of the Louisiana Constitution
provides that “[n]o law shall curtail or restrain the freedom of speech or of the press. Every person
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may speak, write, and publish his sentiments on any subject, but is responsible for abuse of that
freedom.” LA. CONST. art. I, § 7. All other State Constitutions likewise protect the freedom of
45. The freedom of speech and expression guaranteed by the First Amendment is one of the
greatest bulwarks of liberty. These rights are fundamental and must be protected against
government interference.
46. If the President or Congress enacted a law or issued an order requiring the suppression of
certain disfavored viewpoints or speakers on social media, or directing social media to demonetize,
shadow-ban, or expel certain disfavored speakers, such a law or order would be manifestly
47. “If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or
petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of
opinion.” W. Va. State Bd. of Educ. v. Barnette, 319 U.S. 624, 642 (1943).
48. “[T]he First Amendment means that government has no power to restrict expression
because of its message, its ideas, its subject matter, or its content.” Ashcroft v. ACLU, 535 U.S.
49. “In light of the substantial and expansive threats to free expression posed by content-based
restrictions,” the Supreme “Court has rejected as ‘startling and dangerous’ a ‘free-floating test for
First Amendment coverage ... [based on] an ad hoc balancing of relative social costs and benefits.’”
United States v. Alvarez, 567 U.S. 709, 717 (2012) (plurality op.) (quoting United States v. Stevens,
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50. Labeling disfavored speech “misinformation” or “disinformation” does not strip it of First
Amendment protection. “Absent from those few categories where the law allows content-based
regulation of speech is any general exception to the First Amendment for false statements. This
comports with the common understanding that some false statements are inevitable if there is to
be an open and vigorous expression of views in public and private conversation, expression the
51. The Supreme Court has thus rejected the argument “that false statements, as a general rule,
52. “Permitting the government to decree this speech to be a criminal offense, whether shouted
from the rooftops or made in a barely audible whisper, would endorse government authority to
compile a list of subjects about which false statements are punishable. That governmental power
has no clear limiting principle. Our constitutional tradition stands against the idea that we need
Oceania’s Ministry of Truth.” Id. at 723 (citing G. ORWELL, NINETEEN EIGHTY–FOUR (1949)
53. “Were the Court to hold that the interest in truthful discourse alone is sufficient to sustain
a ban on speech … it would give government a broad censorial power unprecedented in this Court's
cases or in our constitutional tradition. The mere potential for the exercise of that power casts a
chill, a chill the First Amendment cannot permit if free speech, thought, and discourse are to remain
54. When the Government believes that speech is false and harmful, “counterspeech,” not
censorship, must “suffice to achieve its interest.” Id. at 726. The First Amendment presumes that
“the dynamics of free speech, of counterspeech, of refutation, can overcome the lie.” Id.
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55. “The remedy for speech that is false is speech that is true. This is the ordinary course in a
free society. The response to the unreasoned is the rational; to the uninformed, the enlightened; to
56. “The theory of our Constitution is ‘that the best test of truth is the power of the thought to
get itself accepted in the competition of the market.’” Id. at 728 (quoting Abrams v. United States,
57. “The First Amendment itself ensures the right to respond to speech we do not like, and for
good reason. Freedom of speech and thought flows not from the beneficence of the state but from
the inalienable rights of the person. And suppression of speech by the government can make
exposure of falsity more difficult, not less so. Society has the right and civic duty to engage in
open, dynamic, rational discourse. These ends are not well served when the government seeks to
58. The First Amendment also protects the right to receive others’ thoughts, messages, and
viewpoints freely, in a free flow of public discourse. “[W]here a speaker exists …, the protection
afforded is to the communication, to its source and to its recipients both.” Va. State Bd. of
Pharmacy v. Va. Citizens Consumer Council, 425 U.S. 748, 756 (1976).
59. The right to receive information is “an inherent corollary of the rights to free speech and
press that are explicitly, guaranteed by the Constitution,” because “the right to receive ideas
follows ineluctably from the sender’s First Amendment right to send them.” Bd. of Educ., Island
Trees Union Free Sch. Dist. No. 26 v. Pico, 457 U.S. 853, 867 (1982). “The dissemination of ideas
can accomplish nothing if otherwise willing addressees are not free to receive and consider them.
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It would be a barren marketplace of ideas that had only sellers and no buyers.” Lamont v.
Postmaster Gen., 381 U.S. 301, 308 (1965) (Brennan, J., concurring).
60. “A fundamental principle of the First Amendment is that all persons have access to places
where they can speak and listen, and then, after reflection, speak and listen once more.”
61. “[A]ssuring that the public has access to a multiplicity of information sources is a
governmental purpose of the highest order, for it promotes values central to the First Amendment.”
Turner Broadcasting Sys., Inc. v. FCC, 512 U.S. 622, 663 (1994). Indeed, “the widest possible
dissemination of information from diverse and antagonistic sources is essential to the welfare of
the public.” United States v. Midwest Video Corp., 406 U.S. 649, 668 n.27 (1972) (plurality op.)
(quotations omitted).
62. It is “axiomatic” that the government may not “induce, encourage, or promote private
63. A private entity violates the First Amendment “if the government coerces or induces it to
take action the government itself would not be permitted to do, such as censor expression of a
lawful viewpoint.” Knight First Amendment Institute, 141 S. Ct. at 1226 (Thomas, J., concurring).
“The government cannot accomplish through threats of adverse government action what the
64. Threats of adverse regulatory or legislative action, to induce private actors to censor third
parties’ speech, violate the First Amendment. See Hammerhead Enters. v. Brezenoff, 707 F.2d 33,
39 (2d Cir. 1983) (“Where comments of a government official can reasonably be interpreted as
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intimating that some form of punishment or adverse regulatory action will follow the failure to
accede to the official’s request, a valid claim can be stated.”); see also Bantam Books v. Sullivan,
372 U.S. 58, 68 (1963) (holding that a veiled threat of prosecution to pressure a private bookseller
65. The unprecedented control over private speech exercised by social-media companies gives
achieve indirect censorship of private speech. “By virtue of its ownership of the essential
pathway,” a social media platform “can . . . silence the voice of competing speakers with a mere
flick of the switch.” Turner, 512 U.S. at 656; see also Knight First Amendment Inst., 141 S. Ct. at
1224 (Thomas, J., concurring). “The potential for abuse of this private power over a central avenue
B. The Dominance of Social Media as a Forum for Public Information and Discourse.
66. Social media has become, in many ways, “the modern public square.” Packingham v.
North Carolina, 137 S. Ct. 1730, 1737 (2017). Social media platforms provide “perhaps the most
powerful mechanisms available to a private citizen to make his or her voice heard.” Id.
67. “Today’s digital platforms provide avenues for historically unprecedented amounts of
speech, including speech by government actors. Also unprecedented, however, is the concentrated
control of so much speech in the hands of a few private parties.” Knight First Amendment Institute,
68. The “concentration” of power in social media companies “gives some digital platforms
enormous control over speech.” Id. at 1224. Defendants have not hesitated to exploit this power.
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69. For example, on information and belief, Facebook has close to 3 billion registered users
worldwide and over 124 million users in the United States, including millions of Missourians and
70. On information and belief, Twitter has more than 340 million users worldwide, including
approximately 70 million users in the United States. Approximately 500 million tweets are posted
on Twitter every day, and they are accessible to non-Twitter users on the internet. Moreover,
Twitter users include large numbers of politicians, journalists, public figures, and others with a
disproportionately large impact on public discourse in other forums, so Twitter’s impact on public
71. On information and belief, YouTube has more than 4 billion hours of video views every
month. Videos on YouTube channels are visible to both YouTube users and to the general public
on the internet. An estimated 500 hours of video content are uploaded to YouTube every minute.
72. YouTube is extremely popular among politicians and public figures in reaching their
audiences. On information and belief, in 2020, approximately 92 percent of U.S. Senators and 86
73. According to a recent Pew Research study, 66 percent of U.S. adults use Facebook, and 31
percent of U.S. adults say they get news regularly on Facebook. Walker et al., News Consumption
Across Social Media in 2021, PEW RESEARCH CENTER (Sept. 20, 2021), at
https://www.pewresearch.org/journalism/2021/09/20/news-consumption-across-social-media-in-
2021/.
74. According to the same study, 72 percent of U.S. adults say that they use YouTube, and 22
percent of U.S. adults say that they regularly get news on YouTube. Id.
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75. According to the same study, 23 percent of U.S. adults say that they use Twitter, and 13
percent of U.S. adults say they regularly get news on Twitter. Id. This comprises 55 percent of
76. According to the same study, 41 percent of U.S. adults say that they use Instagram, and 11
percent of U.S. adults say they regularly get news on Instagram. Id.
77. The free flow of information and expression on social media directly affects non-users of
social media as well. Social-media users who are exposed to information, ideas, and expression
through social media communicate the same information, ideas, and expression with non-social-
media users. News, information, messages, narratives, and storylines that originate on social
media are frequently replicated in other forums, such as television, print media, and private
users. For example, posts on Twitter are directly accessible on the internet to non-Twitter-users,
and content on YouTube is available to the general public on the internet as well.
78. In the aggregate, these numbers of Americans who (1) use social-media platforms, and (2)
regularly use social-media platforms to obtain news and information about matters of public
Louisianans, and very substantial segments of the populations of Missouri, Louisiana, and every
other State.
79. There are also many ways for social-media companies to censor or suppress speech on
social-media platforms. Some of these methods are immediately known to the speaker and/or his
or her audience, and some are not visible to them. Censorship, therefore, can occur without the
knowledge of the speaker and/or his or her audience. These methods include, but are not limited
to, terminating speakers’ accounts, suspending accounts, imposing warnings or strikes against
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accounts to chill future disfavored speech, “shadow banning” speakers, demonetizing content,
content, placing warning labels on content, suppressing content in other users’ feeds, promoting
content, among many others. Many methods, moreover, have a chilling effect on social-media
speakers to self-censor to avoid making statements that might be deemed to violate the social-
media companies’ vague, ever-changing, often-hidden, and inconsistently enforced standards for
censoring and suppressing speech. Collectively herein, all these methods of suppressing and/or
censoring speech on social media are called “censorship” and/or “suppression” of social-media
speech.
80. The censorship and suppression of free speech on social media functions in most cases as
a prior restraint on speech, both through its direct effect and its chilling effects. A prior restraint
81. Yesterday’s “misinformation” often becomes today’s viable theory and tomorrow’s
established fact. “Even where there is a wide scholarly consensus concerning a particular matter,
the truth is served by allowing that consensus to be challenged without fear of reprisal. Today’s
accepted wisdom sometimes turns out to be mistaken.” Alvarez, at 752 (Alito, J., dissenting)
(emphasis added). This prediction has proven true, again and again, when it comes to suppressing
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82. Perhaps most notoriously, social-media platforms aggressively censored an October 14,
2020 New York Post exposé about the contents of the laptop of (then-Candidate Biden’s son)
Hunter Biden, which had been abandoned in a Delaware repair shop and contained compromising
photos and email communications about corrupt foreign business deals. As the New York Post
reported at the time, “[b]oth Twitter and Facebook took extraordinary censorship measures against
The Post on Wednesday over its exposés about Hunter Biden’s emails … The Post’s primary
Twitter account was locked as of 2:20 p.m. Wednesday because its articles about the messages
obtained from Biden’s laptop broke the social network’s rules against ‘distribution of hacked
material,’ according to an email The Post received from Twitter,” even though there were “zero
claims that [Hunter Biden’s] computer had been hacked.” Twitter, Facebook censor Post over
twitter-block-the-post-from-posting/. “Twitter also blocked users from sharing the link to The
Post article indicating that Hunter Biden introduced Joe Biden to the Ukrainian businessman,
83. As the Wall Street Journal Editorial Board reported, “nearly all of the media at the time
ignored the story or ‘fact-checked’ it as false. This … was all the more egregious given other
evidence supporting the Post’s scoop. Neither Hunter Biden nor the Biden campaign denied that
the laptop was Hunter’s. And Hunter’s former business partner, Tony Bobulinski, went public
with documents backing up some of the laptop’s contents.” Editorial Board, Hunter Biden’s
Laptop Is Finally News Fit to Print, WALL ST. J. (March 18, 2022).
84. Biden, his allies, and those acting in concert with them falsely attacked the Hunter Biden
spooks James Clapper and John Brennan—circulated a statement peddling the Russian
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‘disinformation’ line—even as they admitted they had no evidence. Th[e] result was a blackout
of the Hunter news, except in a few places….” Id. Parroting the Biden campaign’s false line, both
social media platforms and major news organizations treated the story as “disinformation” and
85. In early 2022—over a year and a half later—major news organizations finally admitted
that the Hunter Biden laptop story was truthful and rested on reliable sourcing and information.
Id. The Washington Post and the New York Times quietly acknowledged the truth and reliability
86. Free-speech advocate Glenn Reynolds aptly described this embarrassing episode as one
that permanently damaged the credibility and reputation for fairness of social-media platforms and
major media outlets: “Twitter and other tech giants banned The Post’s reporting, since admitted
to be accurate, on Hunter Biden’s laptop and the damaging information it contained. Many social-
media giants banned any links to the story, and Twitter even went so far as to stop its users from
sharing the story one-on-one through direct messages. (CEO Jack Dorsey later admitted that was
a ‘total mistake.’) Their purpose was to affect the election’s outcome in favor of the Democrats,
and they probably did.” Glenn H. Reynolds, ‘Censorship is free speech’ is the establishment’s
Orwellian line on Elon Musk’s Twitter crusade, N.Y. POST (Apr. 15, 2022),
https://nypost.com/2022/04/14/the-establishments-orwellian-line-on-elon-musks-twitter-
crusade/.
87. Likewise, beginning in February 2020, social-media platforms censored speech advocating
for the lab-leak theory of the origins of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. The lab-
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leak theory postulates that the virus did not originate naturally in bats or other animals, but leaked
from a biotech laboratory in Wuhan, China, operated by the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
88. On information and belief, Defendant Dr. Anthony Fauci, a senior federal government
official, coordinating with others, orchestrated a campaign to discredit the lab-leak hypothesis in
early 2020. As director of NIAID, Dr. Fauci had funded risky “gain-of-function” research at the
Wuhan Institute of Virology through intermediaries such as EcoHealth Alliance, headed by Dr.
Peter Daszak. Thus, if the lab-leak theory were established, Dr. Fauci and Dr. Daszak could be
potentially implicated in funding the research on viruses that caused the COVID-19 pandemic and
89. During the same time frame as he was orchestrating a campaign to falsely discredit the lab-
leak theory, Dr. Fauci was exchanging emails with Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Facebook,
information and belief, Dr. Fauci coordinated directly with Facebook and/or other social-media
90. Not surprisingly, social-media platforms like Facebook promptly accepted Dr. Fauci’s
initiative to discredit the lab-leak theory, and they engaged in an aggressive campaign to censor
speech advocating for the lab-leak theory on social media on the ground that it was supposedly
disinformation. Facebook “expand[ed] its content moderation on Covid-19 to include ‘false’ and
suppressing speech by highly credentialed and well-respected writers, such as “science journalist
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Nicholas Wade,” id., and scientist Alina Chan. Other social-media platforms likewise censored
91. By 2021, however, “the circumstantial evidence” favoring the lab-leak theory “finally
permeated the insular world of progressive public health,” id., and Fauci and other Biden
Administration officials were forced to admit the theory’s inherent plausibility. After a long period
of censorship, in May 2021, Facebook and other platforms announced that they would no longer
92. The Wall Street Journal noted the close link between government and social-media
platforms in censoring this speech: “Facebook acted in lockstep with the government,” indicating
that “[w]hile a political or scientific claim is disfavored by government authorities, Facebook will
limit its reach. When government reduces its hostility toward an idea, so will Facebook.” Id.
“Free speech protects the right to challenge government. But instead of acting as private actors
with their own speech rights, the companies are mandating conformity with existing government
views.” Id.
93. There had long been credible—even compelling—evidence of the plausibility of the lab-
leak theory, long before social-media companies stopped censoring it. See, e.g., House Foreign
Affairs Committee Minority Staff Report, The Origins of COVID-19: An Investigation of the
long before censorship lifted); Nicholas Wade, The origin of COVID: Did people or nature open
https://thebulletin.org/2021/05/the-origin-of-covid-did-people-or-nature-open-pandoras-box-at-
wuhan/; ALINA CHAN, VIRAL: THE SEARCH FOR THE ORIGIN OF COVID-19 (Sept. 3, 2021).
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94. Facebook’s decision to stop censoring the lab-leak theory did not come until “after almost
every major media outlet, and … even the British and American security services, finally
confirmed that it is a feasible possibility.” Freddie Sayers, How Facebook censored the lab leak
leak-theory/. Facebook admitted that its decision to end censorship was made “in consultation
95. The reach of Facebook’s censorship alone (to say nothing of other platforms that censored
the lab-leak theory) was enormous. Facebook “displayed ‘warnings’” on such supposed COVID-
19-related misinformation, and claimed that “[w]hen people saw those warning labels, 95% of the
time they did not go on to view the original content.” Id. “Moreover, if an article is rated ‘false’
by their ‘fact checkers’, the network will ‘reduce its distribution’. This means that, while an author
or poster is not aware that censorship is taking place, the network could be hiding their content so
96. Ironically, while admitting that it had erroneously censored speech on the lab-leak theory
for over a year, Facebook announced that it was “now extending its policy of ‘shadow-banning’
accounts that promote misinformation. ‘Starting today, we will reduce the distribution of all posts
in News Feed from an individual’s Facebook account if they repeatedly share content that has been
rated by one of our fact-checking partners.’ So now, if you share something deemed to contain
misinformation multiple times, your account could be silenced; you won’t be informed, you won’t
know to what degree your content will be hidden and you won’t know how long it will last—all
that “this announcement was made on the very same day as Facebook’s admission of error” on the
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97. Social-media platforms also aggressively censored speech questioning the efficacy of
masks and lockdowns as COVID-19 mitigation measures. Yet evidence revealed that concerns
98. For example, on information and belief, Twitter’s “COVID-19 misleading information
policy,” as of December 2021, noted that Twitter will censor (label or remove) speech claiming
that “face masks … do not work to reduce transmission or to protect against COVID-19,” among
https://help.twitter.com/en/rules-and-policies/medical-misinformation-policy. On information
and belief, both Twitter and other social-media platforms have imposed similar policies, imposing
censorship on speech questioning the efficacy of masks and the efficacy of lockdowns as COVID-
19 mitigation measures.
99. On April 8, 2021, YouTube “deleted a video in which Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and a
handful of medical experts,” including Plaintiffs Bhattacharya and Kulldorff, “questioned the
effectiveness of having children wear masks to stop the spread of COVID-19.” YouTube Purges
Ron DeSantis Video Over Claims Children Don’t Need to Wear Masks, THE WRAP (Apr. 8, 2021),
https://www.thewrap.com/youtube-purges-florida-governor-video-over-claims-children-dont-
need-to-wear-masks/.
100. On August 10, 2021, “YouTube barred Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) from uploading
new videos to the site for seven days, after the ophthalmologist posted a video last week arguing
that most masks ‘don’t work’ against the coronavirus.” Rand Paul Suspended from YouTube Over
paul-suspended-from-youtube-over-covid-claims/?sh=31f1d4e01971.
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101. “When Scott Atlas, a member of the Trump White House’s coronavirus task force,
questioned the efficacy of masks last year, Twitter removed his tweet. When eminent scientists
from Stanford and Harvard recently told Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis that children should not be
forced to wear masks, YouTube removed their video discussion from its platform.” How
Facebook uses ‘fact-checking’ to suppress scientific truth, N.Y. POST (May 18, 2021),
https://nypost.com/2021/05/18/how-facebook-uses-fact-checking-to-suppress-scientific-truth/.
102. In the same vein, Facebook suppressed a scientist for citing a peer-reviewed study
“by a team of researchers in Germany who established an online registry for thousands of parents
to report on the impact of masks on their children. More than half of those who responded said
that masks were giving their children headaches and making it difficult for them to concentrate.
More than a third cited other problems, including malaise, impaired learning, drowsiness and
fatigue.” Id.
103. On November 21, 2020, “[t]wo leading Oxford University academics … accused
Facebook of ‘censorship’ after it claimed an article they wrote on face masks amounted to ‘false
information’.” Two top Oxford academics accuse Facebook of censorship for branding their
article on whether masks work ‘false information’, DAILY MAIL (Nov. 21, 2020)
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8973631/Two-Oxford-academics-accuse-Facebook-
censorship-article-warning.html.
compelling evidence contradicted it, both before and after their implementation. Tracking the
aggregate case numbers in States with and without mask mandates over the course of the COVID-
19 pandemic, in a “natural experiment,” demonstrates that mask mandates made “zero difference.”
John Tierney, The Failed COVID Policy of Mask Mandates, CITY J. (April 19, 2022),
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mortality rates were “virtually identical.” Id. Indeed, “mask mandates were implemented without
scientific justification,” and “they failed around the world.” Id. “In their pre-Covid planning
strategies for a pandemic, neither the Centers for Disease Control nor the World Health
Organization had recommended masking the public—for good reason. Randomized clinical trials
involving flu viruses had shown, contrary to popular wisdom in Japan and other Asian countries,
that there was ‘no evidence that face masks are effective in reducing transmission,’ as the WHO
summarized the scientific literature.” Id. “Anthony Fauci acknowledged this evidence early in
the pandemic, both in his public comments (‘There’s no reason to be walking around with masks,’
he told 60 Minutes) and in his private emails (‘I do not recommend you wear a mask,’ he told a
colleague, explaining that masks were too porous to block the small Covid virus).” Id. “Instead
of carefully analyzing the effects of masks, the CDC repeatedly tried to justify them by
misrepresenting short-term trends and hyping badly flawed research, like studies in Arizona and
Kansas purporting to show that infections had been dramatically reduced by the mask mandates
imposed in some counties. But in each state, … infection rates remained lower in the counties that
did not mandate masks.” Id.; see also, e.g., IAN MILLER, UNMASKED: THE GLOBAL FAILURE OF
105. Ironically, Plaintiff Kulldorff was suspended on Twitter for several weeks for
posting that masks endow vulnerable individuals with a false sense of security, because they
actually do not work well to protect against viral infection. This exemplifies the danger of
from conveying to the public that vulnerable people should not rely on masks for protection could
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106. Likewise, no convincing evidence supported the efficacy of lockdowns. Quite the
contrary. In January 2022, a Johns Hopkins meta-analysis reviewed the efficacy of lockdowns as
a COVID-19 mitigation measure and found that they had minimal impact, if any, on COVID-19
mortality rates. The study reached “the conclusion that lockdowns have had little to no effect on
COVID-19 mortality… [L]ockdowns in Europe and the United States only reduced COVID-19
mortality by 0.2% on average…. While this meta-analysis concludes that lockdowns have had
little to no public health effects, they have imposed enormous economic and social costs where
they have been adopted. In consequence, lockdown policies are ill-founded and should be rejected
as a pandemic policy instrument.” Herby et al., A Literature Review and Meta-Analysis of the
available at https://sites.krieger.jhu.edu/iae/files/2022/01/A-Literature-Review-and-Meta-
Analysis-of-the-Effects-of-Lockdowns-on-COVID-19-Mortality.pdf.
107. On December 21, 2021, Dr. Leana Wen, a CNN medical commentator and strong
advocate for COVID-19 restrictions, tweeted that “cloth masks are little more than facial
decorations.” CNN’s Leana Wen: ‘Cloth Masks Are Little More Than Facial Decorations’,
REASON, at https://reason.com/2021/12/21/leana-wen-cloth-mask-facial-decorations-covid-cdc-
guidance/. Twitter did not censor this tweet, even though it undermined the efficacy of mask
mandates that permitted the use of cloth masks (i.e., virtually all of them)—undoubtedly because
it was advocating for more aggressive mitigation measures (i.e., higher-quality masks than cloth
108. “On September 26, 2021, CDC Director Walensky cited an Arizona study to claim
that schools without mask mandates were 3.5 times more likely to experience COVID-19
outbreaks. However, the study is so flawed that experts have said it ‘should not have entered into
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the public discourse’ and that you ‘can’t learn anything’ about mask rules from the study.” March
11, 2022 Letter of U.S. Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, et al., to Surgeon General Murthy, at
https://republicans-energycommerce.house.gov/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/3.11.22-Letter-to-
that raised concerns about the security of voting by mail, a major election-security issue.
Trump and the Trump campaign raising concerns about the security of voting by mail in the run-
110. This censorship is ironic because, for many years before 2020, it was a common
left-wing talking point to claim that fraud occurred in voting by mail. In opposing photo-ID
requirements for in-person voting, Democrats and their allies frequently claimed that photo IDs
for in-person voting were pointless because voting by mail, not in-person voting, presented the
111. These Democratic claims of fraud in voting by mail were widely parroted in
mainstream media for many years. For example, in 2012, the New York Times wrote that “votes
cast by mail are less likely to be counted, more likely to be compromised and more likely to be
contested than those cast in a voting booth, statistics show,” in an article headlined “Error and
published an articles stating that “[i]t may still be possible to steal an American election, if you
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know the right way to go about it,” citing a case in which “[c]onspirators allegedly bought off
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/decision2012/selling-votes-is-common-type-of-
election-fraud/2012/10/01/f8f5045a-071d-11e2-81ba-ffe35a7b6542_story.html. In 2014,
MSNBC claimed: “Indeed, election experts say absentee ballot fraud is the most common form of
organized voter fraud, since, because of the secret ballot, there’s no way to ensure that an in-person
Exists. Republican Restrictions Won’t Stop It,” that “[t]he vast majority of voter fraud
prosecutions touted by conservative groups like the Heritage Foundation involve absentee ballots
that were illegally cast. And the only voting fraud schemes with the potential to actually swing
exists-through-absentee-ballots-but-republicans-wont-stop-it.html.
112. Many other authorities confirm the reasonableness of concerns about security of
voting by mail. For example, in Crawford v. Marion County Election Board, the U.S. Supreme
Court held that fraudulent voting “perpetrated using absentee ballots” demonstrates “that not only
is the risk of voter fraud real but that it could affect the outcome of a close election.” Crawford v.
Marion County Election Bd., 553 U.S. 181, 195–96 (2008) (opinion of Stevens, J.) (emphasis
added).
by former President Jimmy Carter and former Secretary of State James A. Baker—determined that
“[a]bsentee ballots remain the largest source of potential voter fraud.” BUILDING CONFIDENCE IN
U.S. ELECTIONS: REPORT OF THE COMMISSION ON FEDERAL ELECTION REFORM, at 46 (Sept. 2005),
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at https://www.legislationline.org/download/id/1472/file/3b50795b2d0374cbef5c29766256.pdf.
ways.” Id. “Blank ballots mailed to the wrong address or to large residential buildings might be
intercepted.” Id. “Citizens who vote at home, at nursing homes, at the workplace, or in church
are more susceptible to pressure, overt and subtle, or to intimidation.” Id. “Vote buying schemes
are far more difficult to detect when citizens vote by mail.” Id. Thus, the Commission noted that
“absentee balloting in other states has been a major source of fraud.” Id. at 35. It emphasized that
voting by mail “increases the risk of fraud.” Id. And the Commission recommended that “States
114. The U.S. Department of Justice’s 2017 Manual on Federal Prosecution of Election
Offenses, published by its Public Integrity Section, states: “Absentee ballots are particularly
susceptible to fraudulent abuse because, by definition, they are marked and cast outside the
presence of election officials and the structured environment of a polling place.” U.S. Dep’t of
common ways” that election-fraud “crimes are committed include … [o]btaining and marking
absentee ballots without the active input of the voters involved.” Id. at 28. And the Manual notes
that “[a]bsentee ballot frauds” committed both with and without the voter’s participation are
115. Thus, social-media censorship that has occurred since 2020 to suppress speech
raising concerns about the security of voting by mail would, if applied even-handedly, suppress
statements about the risks of fraud in mail-in voting by the United States Supreme Court, the
Carter-Baker Commission co-chaired by President Jimmy Carter, and the U.S. Department of
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Justice’s prosecution manual for election-integrity crimes. One would not be able to quote Justice
Stevens’ opinion for the Supreme Court in Crawford on social media if it followed its own rules.
Raising concerns about election integrity, and questioning the security of voting by mail, became
unspeakable on social media only after it became expedient for the Democratic Party and the
116. This censorship of speech, speakers, and viewpoints on such topics and concerns
117. There is a common theme to all these examples of wrong-headed censorship: Each
involved censoring truthful or reliable information that contradicted left-wing political narratives.
What led to the censorship was not the fact that the speech was supposedly false, but that the
narratives. As a result, the ability of politicians and social-media platforms to reliably identify
actual “misinformation” and “disinformation” has been proven false, again and again.
D. Defendants, Using Their Official Authority, Have Threatened, Cajoled, and Colluded
With Social-Media Companies to Silence Disfavored Speakers and Viewpoints.
118. On information and belief, the individual Defendants and those acting in concert
with them have conspired and colluded to suppress Americans’ First Amendment and analogous
expression on such platforms, and they have taken many overt actions to achieve this goal.
1. Section 230 of the CDA subsidized, protected, and fostered the creation of speech-
censorship policies in a small, concentrated group of social-media firms.
119. First, the Defendants did not act in a vacuum. For decades, the federal government
has artificially encouraged, protected, fostered, and subsidized the aggregation of control over
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speech, including the specific power of censorship, by a small group of powerful social-media
firms.
120. In particular, Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act (CDA) artificially
empowered and subsidized the growth of social-media companies and their censorship policies by
effectively immunizing much censorship on social media from liability. Section 230’s unique
liability shield fostered the aggregation of power in the field into a concentrated cluster of powerful
social-media firms, and it directly fostered, protected, and encouraged the development of speech-
censorship policies. This process was greatly accelerated and enhanced by the social-media
121. “Historically, at least two legal doctrines limited a company’s right to exclude.”
Knight First Amendment Institute, 141 S. Ct. at 1222 (Thomas, J., concurring). “First, our legal
system and its British predecessor have long subjected certain businesses, known as common
carriers, to special regulations, including a general requirement to serve all comers.” Id. “Second,
governments have limited a company’s right to exclude when that company is a public
themselves out to the public but do not ‘carry’ freight, passengers, or communications.” Id.
Absent the artificial immunity created by the overly expansive interpretations of Section 230
immunity, these legal doctrines, and free-market forces, would impose a powerful check on
122. The CDA was enacted in 1996 for the purpose of promoting the growth of internet
commerce and protecting against the transmission of obscene materials to children over the
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internet. It was intended to “offer a forum for a true diversity of political discourse,” 47 U.S.C.
§ 230(a)(3), but in recent years Defendants have exploited it to produce the opposite effect.
123. Section 230 of the CDA, 47 U.S.C. § 230, provides unique liability protections for
internet publishers of information, such as social-media companies, which are not available to
other publishers, such as those of printed media. Section 230(c)(1) provides that “[n]o provider or
user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any
words, social-media firms are generally protected from liability for what their users post.
124. Section 230(c)(2), however, also provides that: “No provider or user of an
interactive computer service shall be held liable on account of (A) any action voluntarily taken in
good faith to restrict access to or availability of material that the provider or user considers to be
added). Courts have interpreted Section 230 broadly—beyond its plain textual import—to shield
social-media platforms from liability for censoring anything they deem “objectionable,” even if it
125. This reading is unreasonable and exceeds what Congress authorized. Viewpoint
antithesis of “good faith.” Id. Moreover, Congress intended the “otherwise objectionable” material
in § 230(c)(2)(A) to refer only to content similar to “obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively
violent, [and] harassing” content referred to in the same list. Id. But social-media companies have
interpreted this liability shield unreasonably broadly, and have convinced courts to adopt
overbroad interpretations of Section 230 immunity. See, e.g., Malwarebytes, Inc. v. Enigma
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Software Grp. USA, LLC, 141 S. Ct. 13, 15 (2020) (statement of Thomas, J., respecting the denial
of certiorari) (“[C]ourts have extended the immunity in § 230 far beyond anything that plausibly
could have been intended by Congress.”); id. at 15-18 (discussing and criticizing the overbroad
126. These platforms, therefore, have the best of both worlds: They claim that they are
exempt from liability if they leave even atrocious content posted, but they are also exempt from
liability if they censor anything they deem “objectionable, whether or not such material is
127. Further, Section 230 of the CDA purportedly shields such platforms from liability
for colluding with other social-media platforms on how to censor speech: “No provider or user of
an interactive computer service shall be held liable on account of … (B) any action taken to enable
or make available to information content providers or others the technical means to restrict access
social-media platforms do, in fact, extensively coordinate with one another in censoring social-
media speech.
128. Section 230 also purports to preempt any state law to the contrary: “No cause of
action may be brought and no liability may be imposed under any State or local law that is
129. On information and belief, the immunity provided by Section 230 of the CDA
directly contributed to the rise of a small number of extremely powerful social-media platforms,
who have now turned into a “censorship cartel.” The liability shield provided by the federal
government artificially subsidized, fostered, and encouraged the viewpoint and content-based
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130. On information and belief, social-media firms greatly value the immunity provided
by § 230 of the CDA, which continues to provide them with artificial liability protections, and
credible threats to amend or repeal that immunity are powerful motivators to those platforms.
131. On information and belief, the largest and most powerful social-media firms are
also greatly concerned about antitrust liability and enforcement, given their dominance in the
social-media market(s), and credible threats to impose antitrust liability and/or enforcement are
powerful motivators to those platforms as well. Defendants are aware of this too.
132. Defendant Biden, his political allies, and those acting in concert with him have a
long history of threatening to use official government authority to impose adverse legal
speakers and messages disfavored by Biden and his political allies. Common threats of adverse
legal and/or regulatory consequences include the threat of antitrust enforcement or legislation, and
the threat of amending or repealing the liability protections of Section 230 of the Communications
Decency Act (CDA), among others, if social-media companies fail to engage in more aggressive
censorship of viewpoints, content, and speakers disfavored by Defendants. These threats are
effective because they address legal matters of critical concern to dominant social-media firms.
133. Defendants have leveraged these threats to secure such increased censorship of
speakers, content, and viewpoints that they disfavor on social-media platforms; and they have now
moved into a phase of open collusion with the threatened companies, cooperating with them
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134. Threats from Biden, senior government officials in the Biden administration, and
those acting in concert with them come in the context of a history of such threats from senior
federal officials politically allied with them. These threats have routinely linked (1) the prospect
of official government action in the form of adverse legislation, regulation, or agency action—
especially threats of antitrust legislation and/or enforcement and calls to amend or repeal Section
230 of the CDA, among others—with (2) calls for more aggressive censorship and suppression of
speakers, viewpoints, and messages that these officials disfavor. Recent examples include, but are
Speaker Nancy Pelosi, April 12, 2019: “I do think that for the privilege of 230, there has
to be a bigger sense of responsibility on it. And it is not out of the question that that could
be removed.” Nancy Pelosi warns tech companies that Section 230 is ‘in jeopardy’, TECH
(“When asked about Section 230, Pelosi referred to the law as a ‘gift’ to tech companies
that have leaned heavily on the law to grow their business…. ‘It is a gift to them and I don’t
think that they are treating it with the respect that they should, and so I think that that could
be a question mark and in jeopardy… I do think that for the privilege of 230, there has to
be a bigger sense of responsibility on it. And it is not out of the question that that could be
removed.’”).
Senator Mark Warner, Oct. 28, 2020: “It saddens me that some of my colleagues have
joined in the Trump Administration’s cynical and concerted effort to bully platforms into
allowing dark money groups, right-wing militias and even the President himself to continue
and suppress voter participation. We can and should have a conversation about Section
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230—and the ways in which it has enabled platforms to turn a blind eye as their platforms
are used to facilitate discrimination and civil rights violations, enable domestic terrorist
groups to organize violence in plain sight, assist in stalking and networked harassment
campaigns, and enable online frauds targeted at vulnerable users….” Statement of U.S.
https://www.warner.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/2020/10/statement-of-sen-mark-r-
warner-on-facebook-s-decision-to-finally-ban-qanon-from-its-platforms.
Then-Senator Kamala Harris, Sept. 30, 2019: “Look, let’s be honest, Donald Trump’s
Twitter account should be suspended.” Kamala Harris says Trump’s Twitter account
https://www.cnn.com/2019/09/30/politics/kamala-harris-trump-twitter-cnntv/index.html;
Then-Senator Kamala Harris, Oct. 2, 2019: “Hey @jack [i.e., Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey].
Time to do something about this,” providing picture of a tweet from President Trump.
https://twitter.com/kamalaharris/status/1179193225325826050.
Senator Richard Blumenthal, Nov. 17, 2020: “I have urged, in fact, a breakup of tech giants.
Because they’ve misused their bigness and power. … And indeed Section 230 reform,
meaningful reform, including even possible repeal in large part because their immunity is
way too broad and victims of their harms deserve a day in court.” Breaking the News:
Censorship, Suppression, and the 2020 Election Before the S. Comm. on Judiciary, 116th
Senator Mazie Hirono, Feb. 5, 2021: “Sec 230 was supposed to incentivize internet
platforms to police harmful content by users. Instead, the law acts as a shield allowing
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them to turn a blind eye. The SAFE TECH ACT brings 230 into the modern age and makes
https://twitter.com/maziehirono/status/1357790558606024705?lang=bg.
March 2021 Joint Hearing of the Communications and Technology Subcommittee, Joint
Statement of Democratic Committee Chairs: “This hearing will continue the Committee’s
work of holding online platforms accountable for the growing rise of misinformation and
disinformation. ... For far too long, big tech has failed to acknowledge the role they’ve
played in fomenting and elevating blatantly false information to its online audiences.
Industry self-regulation has failed. We must begin the work of changing incentives driving
social media companies to allow and even promote misinformation and disinformation.”
See Yaël Eisenstat & Justin Hendrix, A Dozen Experts with Questions Congress Should
Ask the Tech CEOs—On Disinformation and Extremism, JUST SECURITY (Mar. 25, 2021),
https://www.justsecurity.org/75439/questions-congress-should-ask-the-tech-ceos-on-
disinformation-and-extremism/.
On April 20, 2022, twenty-two Democratic members of Congress sent a letter to Mark
Zuckerberg of Facebook (n/k/a “Meta Platforms, Inc.”), demanding that Facebook increase
censorship of “Spanish-language disinformation across its platforms.” The letter claimed that
“disinformation” was a threat to democracy, and it made explicit threats of adverse legislative
action if Facebook/Meta did not increase censorship: “The spread of these narratives demonstrate
that Meta does not see the problem of Spanish-language disinformation in the United States as a
critical priority for the health of our democracy. The lack of Meta’s action to swiftly address
Spanish-language misinformation globally demonstrates the need for Congress to act to ensure
Spanish-speaking communities have fair access to trustworthy information.” The letter demanded
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information about Facebook’s censorship policies on election-related speech for the upcoming
elections: “How is Meta preparing to proactively detect and address foreign disinformation
operations targeted at Spanish-speaking communities for future elections within the United States,
including the 2022 primaries and general election? … [W]hat new steps has Meta taken to ensure
the effectiveness of its algorithmic content detection policies to address disinformation and hate-
speech across different languages?” April 20, 2022 Letter of Rep. Tony Cardenas, et al., at
https://cardenas.house.gov/imo/media/doc/Meta%20RT%20and%20Spanish%20Language%20D
isinformation%20Congressional%20Letter%20Final.pdf.
135. Comments from two House Members summarize this campaign of pressure and
threats: “In April 2019, Louisiana Rep. Cedric Richmond warned Facebook and Google that they
had ‘better’ restrict what he and his colleagues saw as harmful content or face regulation: ‘We’re
going to make it swift, we’re going to make it strong, and we’re going to hold them very
accountable.’ New York Rep. Jerrold Nadler added: ‘Let’s see what happens by just pressuring
them.’” Vivek Ramaswamy and Jed Rubenfeld, Editorial, Save the Constitution from Big Tech:
Congressional threats and inducements make Twitter and Facebook censorship a free-speech
big-tech-11610387105.
136. Defendants’ political allies have repeatedly used congressional hearings as forums
to advance these threats of adverse legislation if social-media platforms do not increase censorship
of speakers, speech, content, and viewpoints they disfavor. They have repeatedly used such
hearings to berate social-media firm leaders, such as Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook, Jack Dorsey
of Twitter, and Sundar Pichai of Google and YouTube, and to make threats of adverse legal
consequences if censorship is not increased. Such hearings include, but are not limited to, those
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cited above, as well as an antitrust hearing before the House Judiciary Committee on July 29, 2020;
a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on November 17, 2020; and a House Energy and Commerce
137. The flip side of such threats, of course, is the implied “carrot” of retaining Section
230 immunity and avoiding antitrust scrutiny, allowing the major social-media platforms to retain
their legally privileged status that is worth billions of dollars of market share.
138. Starting in or around 2020, if not before, social-media firms have responded to these
viewpoints disfavored by Defendants, senior government officials, and the political left. “With all
the attention paid to online misinformation, it’s easy to forget that the big [social-media] platforms
generally refused to remove false content purely because it was false until 2020.” Gilead Edelman,
Beware the Never-Ending Disinformation Emergency, THE WIRED (March 11, 2022), at
https://www.wired.com/story/youtube-rigged-election-donald-trump-moderation-
misinformation/. On information and belief, it was in response to such threats of adverse legal
targeting speakers and viewpoints on the political right. On information and belief, the examples
of censorship of truthful and reliable speech in 2020, cited above, were motivated in whole or in
139. Then-candidate and now-President Biden has led this charge. He has tripled down
on these threats of adverse official action from his colleagues and allies in senior federal-
government positions. His threats of adverse government action have been among the most
vociferous, and among the most clearly linked to calls for more aggressive censorship of
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140. For example, on January 17, 2020, then-candidate Biden stated, in an interview
with the New York Times editorial board, that Section 230 of the CDA should be “revoked”
because social-media companies like Facebook did not do enough to censor supposedly false
information in the form of political ads criticizing him—i.e., core political speech. He stated: “The
idea that it’s a tech company is that Section 230 should be revoked, immediately should be
revoked, number one. For Zuckerberg and other platforms.” He also stated, “It should be revoked
because it is not merely an internet company. It is propagating falsehoods they know to be false....
There is no editorial impact at all on Facebook. None. None whatsoever. It’s irresponsible. It’s
totally irresponsible.” N.Y. Times Editorial Board, Joe Biden (Jan. 17, 2020), at
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/01/17/opinion/joe-biden-nytimes-interview.html.
These claims were specifically linked to Facebook’s alleged failure to censor core political
141. Candidate Biden also threatened that Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg should be
subject to civil liability and even criminal prosecution for not censoring such core political speech:
“He should be submitted to civil liability and his company to civil liability…. Whether he engaged
in something and amounted to collusion that in fact caused harm that would in fact be equal to a
criminal offense, that’s a different issue. That’s possible. That’s possible it could happen.” Id. In
other words, Biden’s message—not long before he became President of the United States—was
that if Facebook did not censor political ads against him, Zuckerberg should go to prison. These
two threats echoed the same threats made by numerous political allies of the President since 2019,
cited above.
142. During the presidential campaign, now-Vice President Harris made similar threats
against social-media firms to pressure them to engage in more aggressive censorship of speakers,
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content, and viewpoints she disfavors. For example, in addition to the statements cited above, she
stated in 2019: “We will hold social media platforms responsible for the hate infiltrating their
platforms, because they have a responsibility to help fight against this threat to our democracy.
And if you profit off of hate—if you act as a megaphone for misinformation or cyberwarfare, if
you don’t police your platforms—we are going to hold you accountable as a community.” Kamala
https://reason.com/2019/05/07/kamala-harris-promises-to-pursue-online-censorship-as-
president/.
143. In or around June 2020, the Biden campaign published an open letter and online
petition (ironically, on Facebook) calling for Facebook to engage in more aggressive censorship
of core political speech and viewpoints that then-Candidate Biden disfavored. The open letter
complained that Facebook “continues to allow Donald Trump to say anything — and to pay to
ensure that his wild claims reach millions of voters. Super PACs and other dark money groups are
following his example. Trump and his allies have used Facebook to spread fear and misleading
information about voting…. We call for Facebook to proactively stem the tide of false information
material that goes viral. We call for Facebook to stop allowing politicians to hide behind paid
misinformation in the hope that the truth will catch up only after Election Day. There should be a
two-week pre-election period during which all political advertisements must be fact-checked
before they are permitted to run on Facebook. … Anything less will render Facebook a tool of
misinformation that corrodes our democracy.” Biden-Harris, Our Open Letter to Facebook (last
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144. The online petition demanded that Facebook “[p]romote real news, not fake news,”
“[q]uickly remove viral misinformation,” and “[e]nforce voter suppression rules against
everyone—even the President [Trump].” The petition complained that Facebook “continues to
amplify misinformation and lets candidates pay to target and confuse voters with lies.” It
demanded that Facebook “promote authoritative and trustworthy sources of election information,
rather than rants of bad actors and conspiracy theorists,” “promptly remove false, viral
information,” and “prevent political candidates and PACs from using paid advertising to spread
lies and misinformation – especially within two weeks of election day.” Biden-Harris,
145. On September 28, 2020, the Biden-Harris campaign sent a letter to Facebook
political speech, including social-media political ads. Sept. 28, 2020 Biden-Harris Letter, at
146. A federal lawsuit filed in 2021 alleged that “before and after the November, 2020
election,” California government officials “contracted with partisan Biden campaign operatives to
police speech online. The secretary of state of California then sent these flagged tweets to Twitter,
Instagram, YouTube and other platforms for their removal.” Harmeet Dhillon: Biden White House
'flags' Big Tech – here's why digital policing is so dangerous, FOX NEWS (July 16, 2021), at
https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/biden-white-house-flags-big-tech-digital-policing-harmeet-
dhillon. Once in power, Biden and those acting in concert with him would continue this same
course of conduct of “flagging” content for censorship by private social-media firms, now using
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the authority of the federal government to “flag” specific speech and speakers for censorship and
suppression.
staff and top technical advisor, Bruce Reed, publicly stated that “it’s long past time to hold the
social media companies accountable for what’s published on their platforms.” Biden Tech
Advisor: Hold Social Media Companies Accountable for What Their Users Post, CNBC.com (Dec.
2, 2020), at https://www.cnbc.com/2020/12/02/biden-advisor-bruce-reed-hints-that-section-230-
needs-reform.html. This comment specifically referred to the amendment or repeal of Section 230
of the Communications Decency Act. See id. Thus, the threat of adverse legal consequences for
social-media companies that did not censor opposing political viewpoints was at the forefront of
148. Coming into the new Administration, with now-President Biden’s political allies in
control of both Houses of Congress, social-media companies were on clear notice that the federal
government’s involvement in social-media censorship was likely to escalate, and their threats of
adverse legislation, regulation, and legal action became more ominous. On information and belief,
this caused a chilling effect on speech by prompting social-media companies to ramp up their own
censorship programs against disfavored speech and speakers, to preempt the risk of adverse action
149. Once in control of the Executive Branch, Defendants promptly capitalized on these
threats by pressuring, cajoling, and openly colluding with social-media companies to actively
150. Defendants, those acting in concert with them, and those allied with them routinely
seek to justify overt censorship of disfavored speakers and viewpoints by wrapping it in the
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“healthy news environment,” among others. This is the Orwellian vocabulary of censorship. It is
151. As noted above, these labels have proven extremely unreliable. Defendants’ and
unreliable because they apply such labels, not based on actual truth or falsity, but based on their
current preferred political narrative. This has resulted, again and again, in the suppression of
3. White House and HHS officials collude with social-media firms to suppress speech.
152. Before the Biden Administration took office, on information and belief,
coordination and collusion between senior HHS officials and social-media companies to censor
viewpoints and speakers was already underway. Once in office, senior officials in the Biden
Administration—in the White House, in HHS, and elsewhere—capitalized and greatly expanded
on these efforts.
153. On information and belief, beginning on or around January or February 2020, if not
before, Defendant Dr. Anthony Fauci, a senior federal government official, coordinated with
social-media firms to police and suppress speech regarding COVID-19 on social media.
154. Prior to 2020, as head of NIAID, Dr. Fauci had overseen funding of risky gain-of-
function research on viruses, including research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. This included
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research funded through intermediaries such as Dr. Peter Daszak and the EcoHealth Alliance,
among others.
155. In late January and early February 2020, Dr. Fauci received information from
colleagues that suggested that the COVID-19 virus may have originated in a laboratory in Wuhan,
China. This revelation threatened to implicate Dr. Fauci in the virus’s origins, as he had funded
the risky research that, under this theory, led to the virus’s origin. Soon thereafter, Dr. Fauci
discredit and suppress this lab-leak theory. After the conference call, influential individuals signed
public statements that were placed in science journals in attempt to discredit the lab-leak theory.
156. In the same time frame, Dr. Fauci communicated with Facebook CEO Mark
Zuckerberg directly regarding public messaging and the flow of information on social media about
the government’s COVID-19 response. For example, in a series of emails produced in response
to FOIA requests dated from March 15 to 17, 2020, Zuckerberg invited Fauci to make public
statements to be posted for viewing by all Facebook users regarding COVID-19, and also made
another proposal that is redacted in FOIA-produced versions but was treated as a high priority by
157. In an email on March 15, 2020, Zuckerberg proposed coordinating with Fauci on
COVID-19 messaging to “make sure people can get authoritative information from reliable
sources,” and suggested including a video message from Fauci because “people trust and want to
hear from experts.” Zuckerberg proposed including this content in a “hub” that “we’re going to
put at the top of Facebook” to reach “200+ million Americans, 2.5 billion people worldwide.”
158. In the same email, Zuckerberg made a three-line proposal to Fauci that was redacted
by the federal government before the email was produced in a FOIA request.
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159. The next day, NIH’s communications director emailed Fauci and strongly
recommended that he do the videos for Facebook. Regarding the redacted proposal from
Zuckerberg, she stated: “But an even bigger deal is his offer [REDACTED]. The sooner we get
that offer up the food-chain the better.” She also stated that her staff was “standing by to discuss
this with HHS and WH comms,” and requested authority to “determine who the best point of
contact would be so the Administration can take advantage of this officer, soonest.” Fauci
responded that “I will write or call Mark and tell him that I am interested in doing this. I will then
tell him that you will get for him the name of the USG [on information and belief, shorthand for
160. Fauci responded by email to Zuckerberg on March 17, 2020, agreeing to the
collaboration that Zuckerberg proposed and describing his redacted proposal as “very exciting.”
161. As alleged above, around the same time frame as the Zuckerberg-Fauci emails,
Facebook and other social-media companies censored and suppressed speakers and speech
advocating for the lab-leak theory of COVID-19’s origins, despite the overwhelming
circumstantial evidence favoring that theory. This censorship directly implemented the plan,
orchestrated by Fauci and others in early 2020, to discredit and suppress the lab-leak theory.
162. In the same timeframe, Facebook and other social-media companies began an ever-
increasing campaign of monitoring, censorship, and suppression of speech and speakers about
COVID-19 and issues related to COVID-19. This campaign would dramatically escalate with the
163. On information and belief, those firms coordinated directly with Fauci, CDC, and
other government officials regarding censorship and suppression of disfavored speech and
speakers.
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164. For example, Facebook’s “COVID and Vaccine Policy” states that Facebook “does
not allow false claims about the vaccines or vaccination programs which public health experts
have advised us could lead to COVID-19 vaccine rejection.” Facebook, COVID-19 and Vaccine
added). On information and belief, Fauci and CDC officials are included among those “public
health experts” who “advise[]” Facebook on what to censor. Facebook also censors COVID-19
information as “false,” not based on actual truth or falsity, but based on whether the claim
contradicts or challenges the pronouncements of Fauci and the CDC. Id. This includes strongly
supported claims such as “[c]laims that wearing a face mask properly does not help prevent the
spread of COVID-19,” along with an elaborate list of additional disfavored content and viewpoints
165. On information and belief, other social-media firms have similar policies and
similar practices of coordinating with Fauci and the CDC and with each other, directly or
166. Such collusion between HHS officials and social-media companies on the
censorship of disfavored speakers and speech accelerated once the Biden Administration took
office.
167. On May 5, 2021, Defendant Psaki gave a White House press conference at which
she stated that “[t]he President’s view is that the major platforms have a responsibility related to
the health and safety of all Americans to stop amplifying untrustworthy content, disinformation,
and misinformation, especially related to COVID-19, vaccinations, and elections. And we’ve seen
that over the past several months, broadly speaking…. we’ve seen it from a number of sources.”
White House, Press Briefing by Press Secretary Jen Psaki and Secretary of Agriculture Tom
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briefings/2021/05/05/press-briefing-by-press-secretary-jen-psaki-and-secretary-of-agriculture-
tom-vilsack-may-5-2021/.
168. Echoing Biden’s past threats to social-media firms, Psaki immediately went on to
state that President Biden “supports better privacy protections and a robust anti-trust program.”
Id. (emphasis added). She linked the threat of anti-trust enforcement to the demand for more
aggressive censorship by social-media platforms, stating that the President’s “view is that there’s
more that needs to be done to ensure that this type of misinformation; disinformation; damaging,
sometimes life-threatening information is not going out to the American public.” Id.
169. At a White House press briefing with Psaki on July 15, 2021, Surgeon General
Vivek Murthy announced that “health misinformation” constitutes an “urgent public health threat,”
stating that he had “issued a Surgeon General’s Advisory on the dangers of health misinformation.
Surgeon General Advisories are reserved for urgent public health threats. And while those threats
have often been related to what we eat, drink, and smoke, today we live in a world where
misinformation poses an imminent and insidious threat to our nation’s health.” The White House,
Press Briefing by Press Secretary Jen Psaki and Surgeon General Dr. Vivek H. Murthy, July 15,
2021, at https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/press-briefings/2021/07/15/press-briefing-
by-press-secretary-jen-psaki-and-surgeon-general-dr-vivek-h-murthy-july-15-2021/.
170. Surgeon General Murthy stated that “[m]odern technology companies have enabled
misinformation to poison our information environment with little accountability to their users.
They’ve allowed people who intentionally spread misinformation — what we call ‘disinformation’
— to have extraordinary reach.” Id. He accused their algorithms of “pulling us deeper and deeper
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171. Surgeon General Murthy explicitly called for more aggressive censorship of social-
media speech, stating that “we’re saying we expect more from our technology companies. ….
We’re asking them to monitor misinformation more closely. We’re asking them to consistently
172. He also stated that “technology companies have a particularly important role” to
play in combating “misinformation.” He stated: “We know that the dramatic increase in the speed
— speed and scale of spreading misinformation has, in part, been enabled by these platforms. So
that’s why in this advisory today, we are asking them to step up. We know they have taken some
steps to address misinformation, but much, much more has to be done. And we can’t wait longer
for them to take aggressive action because it’s costing people their lives.” Id.
173. He also stated: “we are asking technology companies to help lift up the voices of
credible health authorities…. [T]hey have to do more to reduce the misinformation that’s out there
174. At the same press briefing, after the Surgeon General spoke, Defendant Psaki
stated: “[W]e are in regular touch with these social media platforms, and those engagements
typically happen through members of our senior staff, but also members of our COVID-19 team,
given, as Dr. Murthy conveyed, this is a big issue of misinformation, specifically on the pandemic.”
Id. (emphasis added). She added, “We’re flagging problematic posts for Facebook that spread
disinformation.” Id. (emphasis added). She stated, “we have recommended—proposed that they
create a robust enforcement strategy,” i.e., a more aggressive censorship program. Id.
stating: “[T]here’s about 12 people who are producing 65 percent of anti-vaccine misinformation
on social media platforms. All of them remain active on Facebook, despite some even being
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banned on other platforms, including Facebook — ones that Facebook owns.” Id. And she called
on Facebook and other social-media companies to censor disfavored content and disfavored
viewpoints: “[I]t’s important to take faster action against harmful posts. As you all know,
information travels quite quickly on social media platforms; sometimes it’s not accurate. And
Facebook needs to move more quickly to remove harmful, violative posts — posts that will be
within their policies for removal often remain up for days. That’s too long. The information
176. She stated that “[w]e engage with them [i.e., social-media companies] regularly and
they certainly understand what our asks are.” Id. (emphasis added). She stated that, “we’ve made
a calculation to push back on misinformation,” and that “we are working to combat misinformation
177. The same day, the Surgeon General released his advisory regarding “health
misleading according to the best available evidence at the time. Misinformation has caused
confusion and led people to decline COVID-19 vaccines, reject public health measures such as
masking and physical distancing, and use unproven treatments.” Confronting Health
misinformation-advisory.pdf.
178. The Surgeon General’s advisory called for social-medial companies to “make
‘frictions’— such as suggestions and warnings—to reduce the sharing of misinformation,” and to
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“make it easier for users to report misinformation.” Id. at 12. It called on social-media companies
to “[s]trengthen the monitoring of misinformation,” and to censor disfavored speakers swiftly and
Impose clear consequences for accounts that repeatedly violate platform policies.” Id.
179. Facebook responded by stating that it was, in fact, aggressively censoring “health
misinformation,” and coordinating with the Government to do so. “A Facebook spokesperson said
the company has partnered with government experts, health authorities and researchers to take
‘aggressive action against misinformation about COVID-19 and vaccines to protect public
health.’” White House Slams Facebook as Conduit for COVID-19 Misinformation, REUTERS (July
misinformation-2021-07-15/ (emphasis added). “‘So far we’ve removed more than 18 million
pieces of COVID misinformation, [and] removed accounts that repeatedly break these rules…,’
180. Facebook stated that it “has introduced rules against making certain false claims
181. The next day, July 16, 2021, a reporter asked President Biden what he thought of
COVID misinformation on social media, and he responded, referring to platforms like Facebook,
by stating: “They’re killing people.” They’re Killing People: Biden Denounces Social Media for
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/16/us/politics/biden-facebook-social-media-covid.html. The
New York Times reported that “this week, White House officials went further and singled out
social media companies for allowing false information to proliferate. That came after weeks of
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failed attempts to get Facebook to turn over information detailing what mechanisms were in place
to combat misinformation about the vaccine, according to a person familiar with the matter.” Id.
182. The same day, July 16, 2021, Psaki explicitly called for social-media companies to
coordinate with each other in censoring disfavored speakers, to ensure that such speakers are
completely muzzled. “You shouldn’t be banned from one platform and not others … for providing
misinformation out there.” White House, Press Briefing by Press Secretary Jen Psaki, July 16,
2021, at https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/press-briefings/2021/07/16/press-briefing-
have heeded this demand, and they do, in fact, coordinate extensively with each other in censorship
183. Psaki also demanded that social-media companies “create robust enforcement
strategies,” “tak[e] faster action against harmful posts,” and “promot[e] quality information
algorithms”—which is a euphemism for algorithms that suppress disfavored messages. Id. When
not, because we’re talking about additional steps that should be taken.” Id.
184. Four days later, July 20, 2021, the White House explicitly threatened to amend or
repeal the liability protections of § 230 of the Communications Decency Act if social-media
companies did not increase censorship of disfavored speakers and viewpoints. ‘They Should Be
Held Accountable’: White House Reviews Platforms’ Misinformation Liability, USA TODAY (July
director announced that “[t]he White House is assessing whether social media platforms are legally
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liable for misinformation spread on their platforms.” Id. “We’re reviewing that, and certainly,
185. She “specified the White House is examining how misinformation fits into the
liability protections granted by Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which shields
online platforms from being responsible for what is posted by third parties on their sites.” Id.
Media reported that, in connection with this threat, “Relations are tense between the Biden
administration and social media platforms, specifically Facebook, over the spread of
misinformation online.” Id.; see also, e.g., White House says social media networks should be
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/07/20/white-house-social-networks-should-be-held-accountable-for-
spreading-misinfo.html. When asked whether the President is “open to amending 230 when
Facebook and Twitter and other social media outlets spread false information that cause Americans
harm, shouldn’t they be held accountable in a real way?” White House Communications Director
Bedingfield responded, “We’re reviewing that and certainly they should be held accountable. And
I think you heard the president speak very aggressively about this. He understands that this is an
186. After this series of public statements, responding to “White House pressure,”
Facebook censored the accounts of the 12 specific disfavored speakers whom Psaki accused of
spreading health misinformation. Facebook takes action against ‘disinformation dozen’ after
“hammered the platform in July for allowing the people identified in the report to remain on its
platform.” Id. After they were singled out for censorship by the White House, Facebook “removed
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over three dozen Pages, groups and Facebook or Instagram accounts linked to these 12 people,
including at least one linked to each of the 12 people, for violating our policies.” Id.
187. In the same time frame, Twitter permanently suspended the account of prominent
lockdown critic Alex Berenson, despite repeated reassurances from high-level Twitter executives
that his account was safe, just days after Dr. Fauci singled him out as a danger for suggesting
188. On October 29, 2021, the Surgeon General tweeted from his official account (as
opposed to his personal account, which remains active), in a thread: “We must demand Facebook
and the rest of the social media ecosystem take responsibility for stopping health misinformation
on their platforms. The time for excuses and half measures is long past. We need transparency
https://twitter.com/Surgeon_General/status/1454181191494606854.
189. Defendants’ response to this censorship was to demand still more censorship by
social-media platforms, including but not limited to Facebook. “[A]fter Facebook’s action against
the ‘disinformation dozen,’ a White House spokesperson continued to strongly criticize the
company.” Id. “‘In the middle of a pandemic, being honest and transparent about the work that
needs to be done to protect public health is absolutely vital, but Facebook still refuses to be
on their platform,’ a White House spokesperson told CNN Business. ‘It’s on everyone to get this
right so we can make sure the American people are getting accurate information to protect the
health of themselves and their loved ones -- which is why the Administration will continue to push
leaders, media outlets, and leading sources of information like Facebook to meet those basic
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190. On February 1, 2022, Psaki was asked at a White House press conference whether
the Administration was satisfied with Spotify’s decision to affix advisory warnings to Joe Rogan’s
immensely popular podcast, which featured speakers that contradicted the Administration’s
messaging about COVID-19 and vaccines, or whether the government “think[s] that companies
like Spotify should go further than just, you know, putting a label on” disfavored viewpoints and
speakers. Psaki responded by demanding that Spotify and other platforms “do[] more” to block
disfavored speech: “[O]ur hope is that all major tech platforms … be vigilant to ensure the
So, this disclaimer – it’s a positive step. But we want every platform to continue doing more to
call out … mis- and disinformation while also uplifting accurate information.” She stated that
Spotify’s advisory warnings are “a good step, it’s a positive step, but there’s more that can be
done.” White House, Press Briefing by Press Secretary Jen Psaki, February 1, 2022 (emphases
added), at https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/press-briefings/2022/02/01/press-briefing-
by-press-secretary-jen-psaki-february-1-2022/.
191. On March 3, 2022, the Surgeon General issued a formal “Request for Information”
Misinformation in the Digital Information Environment in the United States Throughout the
COVID-19 Pandemic Request for Information (RFI), 87 Fed. Reg. 12,712-12,714 (March 2, 2022).
192. In the RFI, “[t]he Office of the Surgeon General requests input from interested
parties on the impact and prevalence of health misinformation in the digital information
environment during the COVID–19 pandemic.” Id. at 12,712. The RFI states that “the speed,
scale, and sophistication with which misinformation has been spread during the COVID-19
pandemic has been unprecedented,” and it implies that social-media companies are to blame,
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carrying a clear threat of future regulation: “This RFI seeks to understand both the impact of health
misinformation during the COVID–19 pandemic and the unique role that technology and social
media platforms play in the dissemination of critical health information during a public health
193. The RFI seeks specific information about health “misinformation” on such social-
technology platforms including: General search engines, content sharing platforms, social media
platforms, e-commerce platforms, crowd sourced platforms, and instant messaging systems.” Id.
194. The RFI seeks: “Any aggregate data and analysis on how many users were exposed,
nominated content,” and “[p]otential exposure is the exposure users would have had if they could
see all the content that is eligible to appear within their newsfeeds.” Id. at 12,714. It also seeks
including “[a]ny aggregate data and analysis of technology platform COVID–19 misinformation
policies including implementation of those policies and evaluations of their effectiveness.” Id.
195. Media reports aptly described Murthy as “demand[ing]” information about the
major sources of COVID-19 misinformation by May 2, 2022. Brad Dress, Surgeon General
Demands Data on COVID-19 Misinformation from Major Tech Firms, THE HILL (March 3, 2022),
at https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/596709-surgeon-general-demands-data-on-covid-19-
submit information about the prevalence and scale of COVID-19 misinformation on their sites,
from social networks, search engines, crowdsourced platforms, e-commerce platforms and instant
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messaging systems.” Id. “In his notice to major tech platforms, Murthy is requesting specific
‘exactly how many users saw or may have been exposed to instances of Covid-19
misinformation.’” Id.
196. On or around July 27, 2022, a limited number of emails between CDC officials and
representatives of social-media platforms from late 2020 and early months of 2021 became
publicly available, over a year after they had been requested under FOIA. These newly revealed
allegations of collusion between HHS officials and social-media platforms to censor disfavored
197. These emails indicate that Defendant Carol Y. Crawford of CDC and other CDC
social-media platforms, including flagging specific content for censorship. During 2021,
Google/YouTube—in which she and other federal officials colluded and/or collude with those
platforms about speech to target for suppression. These meetings include Crawford and other
federal officials flagging specific social-media posts for censorship and providing examples of the
types of posts to censor. Crawford emailed “slides” from the “BOLO” meetings to participants
afterwards. These slides included repeated examples of specific posts on social-media platforms
flagged for censorship. The slides called for “all” social-media platforms to “Be On the Lookout”
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for such posts. Crawford cautioned the meeting participants, with respect to these slides, “[p]lease
198. Officials of the Census Bureau participated and/or participate in these BOLO
meetings, including Defendant Jennifer Shopkorn and Christopher Lewitzke, who is a Senior
Digital Marketing Associate with Reingold, a communications firm that was, on information and
belief, acting on behalf of the Census Bureau. Crawford’s emails indicate that the Census Bureau
and its officials and agents, such as Lewitzke and Shopkorn, play an important, active, and ongoing
role in colluding with social-media platforms to censor disfavored speech. On March 18, 2021,
Crawford emailed Twitter officials and stated that “[w]e are working on a project with Census to
leverage their infrastructure to identify and monitor social media for vaccine misinformation,” and
stated that “[w]e would like the opportunity to work with your trust team on a regular basis to
discuss what we are seeing.” She also noted that “I understand that you did this with Census last
year as well.” Twitter responded by stating, “With our CEO testifying before Congress this week
is tricky,” but otherwise agreed to the collusive arrangement. Likewise, in subsequent emails to
Twitter (on May 6) and Facebook (on May 10), Crawford noted to the social-media platform
officials that “[o]ur census team,” i.e., Lewitzke and Shopkorn, who were cc’ed on the emails,
“has much more info on it if needed” regarding “some example posts” of “misinfo” that she flagged
for censorship.
199. Defendants Crawford and others, including the Census officials and agents
Lewitzke and Shopkorn, took other steps to procure the censorship of disfavored speech on social
media. For example, on May 10, 2021, Crawford emailed Twitter officials to flag “two issues that
we are seeing a great deal of misinfo about,” noting that Lewitzke and Shopkorn “ha[ve] much
more info on it if needed.” The same email included 13 specific Twitter posts as examples of the
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sort of posts to be censored. On May 6, 2021, Crawford sent a similar email to Meta/Facebook
officials, also copying Lewitzke and Shophorn and stating that they have “much more info” about
the issue; this email included 16 specific posts from Facebook and Instagram as examples of posts
to be targeted for censorship. On May 12, 2021, Crawford emailed Facebook officials to flag
“some new info on myths your misinfo folks might be interested in,” with links to specific issues
of “misinformation” for Facebook to censor. On April 9, 2021, Crawford agreed with a Twitter
official that CDC would provide “examples of problematic content” posted on Twitter, and the
Twitter official noted that “all examples of misinformation are helpful.” Calendar invites from
early 2021 indicate that Crawford, Jay Dempsey, and other CDC officials participated in
Facebook’s “weekly sync with CDC,” with “CDC to invite other agencies as needed.”
200. In another exchange of emails, Crawford agreed with Facebook officials that CDC
would participate in a COVID-19 “misinfo reporting channel,” and arranged for CDC officials to
have training on the use of Facebook’s “misinfo reporting channel.” On information belief,
Crawford’s “team” at CDC, as well as Shopkorn and Lewitzke from Census, were “onboarded”
onto Facebook’s “misinfo reporting channel.” A calendar invite in May 2021 included Crawford,
Lewitzke, Shopkorn, other CDC officials, and other Reingold employees who were, on
information and belief, acting on behalf of the Census Bureau, to participate in the “onboarding”
201. Crawford’s communications with Facebook indicate that CDC, the Census Bureau,
and other government agencies collaborate with Facebook to flag speech regarding both COVID-
19 and elections for censorship using “CrowdTangle,” which Facebook describes as “a Facebook
tool that tracks how content spreads online.” An email from a Facebook official to Crawford stated
that, using CrowdTangle, “[w]hen health departments flag potential vaccine misinformation on
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Facebook and Instagram, we review and remove the content if it violates our policies… This is
similar to how governments and fact-checkers use CrowdTangle ahead of elections….” (Emphasis
added.)
censorship of COVID-19 “misinformation” and related issues. See Ex. A. For example, the
communications reflect close coordination on creating and publishing content on behalf of CDC
to the suppression of private messaging, including a gift of $15 million in Facebook ad credits
from Facebook to CDC. They also reflect close coordination on amplifying CDC’s content and
4. White House and DHS officials collude with social-media firms to suppress speech.
203. On information and belief, senior officials in the Biden Administration and the
Department of Homeland Security are also colluding with social-media companies to suppress
disfavored speakers and viewpoints. These efforts include censorship of disfavored content and
viewpoints about election integrity and COVID-19, among other topics, under the guise of
suppressing “misinformation” and “domestic terrorism.” These efforts culminated with the
204. A direct forum for government officials to call for social-media censorship of
election-related “misinformation” was already in place during the general election cycle of 2020.
205. In August 2020, social-media firms “met with federal government officials to
discuss how to handle misinformation during this month’s political conventions and election
results this fall.” Ingram et al., Big Tech met with govt to discuss how to handle election results,
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discuss-how-handle-election-results-n1236555.
206. This was one of a “series” of meetings between major social-media companies and
government officials about the suppression of election-related “misinformation”: “‘We held the
latest in a series of meetings with government partners today where we each provided updates on
what we’re seeing on our respective platforms and what we expect to see in the coming months,’
companies including Google, Facebook, Twitter and Reddit said in a joint statement after the
meeting.” Id. “The statement also included Microsoft, Verizon Media, Pinterest, LinkedIn and
the Wikimedia Foundation, which operates Wikipedia and other sites.” Id.
207. The discussion was reported as “one in a series of monthly meetings between the
topics.” Id. Neither the “topics” of the “conversation” nor the particular participants on behalf of
the government were disclosed. Id. “According to the industry statement, participants in
Wednesday’s meeting also included representatives from the FBI’s foreign influence task force,
the Justice Department’s national security division, the Office of the Director of National
Intelligence and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency.” Id. “The companies said
they would continue to meet regularly before the November election.” Id.
208. On September 28, 2020, the Biden-Harris campaign sent a letter to Facebook
demanding that Facebook take “more aggressive” action to censor statements by President Trump
and the Trump campaign that raised concerns about election security and the security of voting by
disinformation” for refusing to censor the rival campaign’s core political speech, thus promoting
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“distrust in our democracy” and threatening to “undermine democracy.” Id. The Biden-Harris
campaign described the Trump campaign’s political speech as “dangerous claptrap” and argued
that “[r]emoving this video should have been the easiest of calls.” Id. The letter demanded that
Facebook “remove Mr. Trump’s posts, which violate your policies.” Id. (underline in original).
209. The same letter complained that Facebook’s “algorithm” permitted Trump’s
political speech to reach millions of people. It complained about the successful reach on Facebook
of political speech that it opposed, bemoaning the fact that “a hyperpartisan propaganda organ like
the Daily Wire is Facebook’s top web publisher.” Id. The Biden-Harris campaign accused
Facebook of allowing speech that it favored “to be drowned out by a storm of disinformation.” Id.
And it concluded, “We will be calling out those failures [to censor Trump’s political speech] as
they occur over the coming 36 days,” i.e., until the November 2020 general election. Id.
210. On information and belief, responding to prior threats from Defendants and those
acting in concert with them, Facebook complied with this demand and did engage in “more
aggressive” censorship of the Trump campaign’s core political speech from then on, resulting in
an aggressive campaign to suppress President Trump and his campaign’s political speech,
especially on issues related to election security. In the wake of the Biden-Harris letter, Facebook
declared that it “won’t allow ads with content that seeks to delegitimize the outcome of an
211. As one commentator noted, “It’s no surprise that Facebook’s policy change
happened the same week that the Biden campaign demanded Trump’s Facebook posts be
censored.” Alexander Hall, Liberal Media Used to Warn Against Mailing Votes; Now Big Tech,
speech/alexander-hall/2020/10/30/liberal-media-used-warn-against-mailing-votes-now-big.
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212. At the same time, “Twitter also modified its rules, stating: ‘we may label and reduce
the visibility of Tweets containing false or misleading information about civic processes in order
213. Both platforms ramped up censorship of core political speech of President Trump
and his campaign, as well as core political speech by others favoring their messages and
campaigns, in the critical final month before the 2020 general election, resulting in egregious acts
election security as a result of the massive increase in voting by mail during the 2020 general
election.
214. In perhaps the most notorious example, as noted above, Twitter, Facebook, and
other social-media companies censored the New York Post’s entirely truthful and carefully
sourced article about Hunter Biden’s laptop on October 14, 2020, as discussed further above. This
censorship included locking the New York Post’s social-media accounts for weeks until after the
election.
215. According to one survey, sixteen percent of Biden voters polled stated that they
would have changed their votes if they had known about the Hunter Biden laptop story before the
“Facebook moderators had to manually intervene to suppress a controversial New York Post story
about Hunter Biden, according to leaked moderation guidelines seen by the Guardian.” Facebook
leak reveals policies on restricting New York Post’s Biden story, THE GUARDIAN (Oct. 30, 2020),
at https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/oct/30/facebook-leak-reveals-policies-
restricting-new-york-post-biden-story.
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217. At the time, Facebook claimed that the censorship of the Hunter Biden laptop story
was “part of our standard process to reduce the spread of misinformation. We temporarily reduce
distribution pending factchecker review.” Id. But this was not true. In fact, Facebook imposed
“special treatment” on the New York Post to suppress the story, which included “manually
218. On December 10, 2020, nine Democratic House Members in the so-called
of Congress) sent a letter to President-elect Biden, calling for the incoming Administration to
create task forces that would increase censorship of “disinformation and misinformation” on social
https://wexton.house.gov/uploadedfiles/12.10.20_house_democrats_disinformation_roadmap_to
_president-elect_biden.pdf.
219. The letter decried the rise of “news environments online, which report vastly
different information and do not offer the same editorial standards to protect against disinformation
and misinformation that traditional news media do.” Id. It criticized social-media platforms for
failing to censor “disinformation” more aggressively: “As social media platforms post record
revenues from engagement, they seldom act as responsible information gatekeepers and, in fact,
have financial incentives to direct users to posts that are false, misleading, or emotionally
manipulative.” Id.
government and civic organizations to combat dangerous propaganda.” Id. The letter
acknowledged that “social media platforms have taken some steps to limit the spread of harmful
disinformation and misinformation over the past year,” but urged that these steps were not nearly
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enough, arguing that “we can still see how easily this content is posted and amplified by bad actors
and unknowing citizens,” that “platforms have financial incentives for engaging posts to reach
larger audiences, regardless of the content,” and that “computer algorithms still make up a majority
of content moderation, and platforms have at times refused to take action against accounts and
221. The letter called for President-elect Biden to deploy the U.S. Department of Justice
and the Department of Homeland Security to combat “disinformation,” and it called for more direct
government involvement in policing the content of political speech on social media platforms, in
order to “build citizen resilience to disinformation and support a healthy information ecosystem”—
222. In announcing the letter, its lead signer, Rep. Wexton, openly stated that Americans
lack the sophistication to make their own judgments about truth and falsity of online speech, and
that government-approved “gatekeepers” of information should be imposed: “In the letter, the
Members recognize that, while a growing number of people in the U.S. are getting their news from
social media platforms, many Americans are ill-equipped to recognize and sift through false,
information gatekeepers to protect against disinformation threats online.” See Dec. 10, 2020 News
Release, https://wexton.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentID=431.
223. Consistent with this letter, the Biden Administration launched several initiatives
designed to inject the power and authority of federal agencies like DHS into policing
“disinformation” and “misinformation” online—which, all too often, means censoring core
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224. On information and belief, DHS and its officials are actively engaged in this project
of procuring the censorship of disfavored speakers, content, and viewpoints in speech about
election integrity.
225. On May 3, 2021, it was reported that DHS intended to “partner with private firms,”
i.e., social-media companies, to monitor disfavored speech online. Biden team may partner with
https://www.cnn.com/2021/05/03/politics/dhs-partner-private-firms-surveil-suspected-domestic-
terrorists/index.html. The purpose of these “partnerships” was to evade legal, constitutional, and
ethical problems with DHS’s direct surveillance of online speech: “The Department of Homeland
Security is limited in how it can monitor citizens online without justification and is banned from
activities like assuming false identities to gain access to private messaging apps.” Id. “Instead,
federal authorities can only browse through unprotected information on social media sites like
Twitter and Facebook and other open online platforms.” Id. “The plan being discussed inside
DHS, according to multiple sources, would, in effect, allow the department to circumvent those
limits.” Id. “Outsourcing some information gathering to outside firms would give DHS the benefit
of tactics that it isn’t legally able to do in-house, such as using false personas to gain access to
226. As noted above, on May 5, 2021, Defendant Psaki stated at a White House press
conference that “[t]he President’s view is that the major platforms have a responsibility related to
the health and safety of all Americans to stop amplifying untrustworthy content, disinformation,
and misinformation, especially related to COVID-19, vaccinations, and elections.” White House,
Press Briefing by Press Secretary Jen Psaki and Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack, May 5,
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briefings/2021/05/05/press-briefing-by-press-secretary-jen-psaki-and-secretary-of-agriculture-
better privacy protections and a robust anti-trust program.” Id. (emphasis added). And she stated
that the President’s “view is that there’s more that needs to be done to ensure that this type of
227. In the same press conference, Psaki notoriously went on to state, “We’re flagging
problematic posts for Facebook that spread disinformation.” Id. On information and belief,
especially in light of Psaki’s earlier reference to speech about “elections,” this statement about
“flagging problematic posts” referred not just to social-media speech about COVID-19, but also
social-media speech about election integrity. See, e.g., White House says social media platforms
https://www.reuters.com/article/ctech-us-trump-facebook-biden-idCAKBN2CM1XU-OCATC.
228. In June 2021, the National Security Council released its “National Strategy for
Countering Domestic Terrorism.” See The White House, National Strategy for Countering
content/uploads/2021/06/National-Strategy-for-Countering-Domestic-Terrorism.pdf. The
“National Strategy” repeatedly claimed that “disinformation and misinformation” are important
elements of “domestic terrorism.” Id. at 9. It claimed that the “ideologies” of domestic terrorists
“connect and intersect with conspiracy theories and other forms of disinformation and
misinformation.” Id. (emphasis added). It stated that such “elements” of domestic terrorism “can
platforms such as social-media.” Id. (emphasis added). It stated that DHS and others “are
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disinformation and misinformation online for domestic audiences.” Id. at 20. The Strategy memo
identified, as its “broader priority,” the task of “enhancing faith in government and addressing the
through social media platforms, which can tear Americans apart….” Id. at 29 (emphasis added).
And it called for DHS and others to “accelerat[e] work to contend with an information environment
that challenges healthy democratic discourse,” and to “find[] ways to counter the influence and
229. On July 26, 2021, the Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism (GIFCT), an
“organization formed by some of the biggest U.S. tech companies including Facebook and
Microsoft,” which includes DHS on its board of advisors, announced that it is “significantly
expanding the types of extremist content shared between firms in a key database,” to move from
images and videos to content-based speech tracking. Facebook and tech giants to target attacker
https://www.reuters.com/technology/exclusive-facebook-tech-giants-target-manifestos-militias-
database-2021-07-26/.
230. “GIFCT … was created in 2017 under pressure from U.S. and European
governments,” and “its database mostly contains digital fingerprints of videos and images related
to groups on the U.N. Security Council’s consolidated sanctions list and a few specific live-
streamed attacks.” Id. “Until now, the Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism’s (GIFCT)
database has focused on videos and images from terrorist groups on a United Nations list,” but
now the group announced that it would move into content-based speech tracking. Id. On
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information and belief, DHS officials including Defendants have access to such database(s) as
231. Shortly thereafter, on August 2, 2021, DHS Secretary Mayorkas announced that
DHS was working directly with social-media companies to censor disfavored speech on social-
media platforms. “On [a] broadcast of MSNBC’s ‘Andrea Mitchell Reports,’ DHS Secretary
Alejandro Mayorkas stated that the department is working with tech companies ‘that are the
platform for much of the disinformation that reaches the American public, how they can better use
their terms of use to really strengthen the legitimate use of their very powerful platforms and
prevent harm from occurring.’” Mayorkas: We’re Working with Platforms on ‘How They Can
Better Use’ Their Terms to ‘Prevent Harm’ from Misinformation, BREITBART NEWS (Aug. 2,
2021), at https://www.breitbart.com/clips/2021/08/02/mayorkas-were-workgin-with-platforms-
on-how-they-can-better-use-their-terms-to-prevent-harm-from-misinformation/.
232. Echoing Psaki’s comments at the July 15, 2021 news conference with Surgeon
General Murthy, Mayorkas stated: “So, we’re working together with them. We’re working with
the tech companies that are the platform for much of the disinformation that reaches the American
public, how they can better use their terms of use to really strengthen the legitimate use of their
very powerful platforms and prevent harm from occurring.” Id. On information and belief, the
reference to “us[ing] their terms of use to really strengthen the legitimate use of their very powerful
233. Mayorkas added that there was a federal-government-wide effort to police speech
on social media, stating: “[T]he connectivity between speech and violence, the connectivity
between active harm and speech is something that we’re very focused on, and it’s a difficult
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challenge. But we’re working on it and meeting that challenge, again, because of the great
personnel of the Department of Homeland Security and across the federal enterprise.” Id.
(emphasis added).
234. Soon after Mayorkas’s August 2, 2021 comments, DHS officials began plotting to
create a “Disinformation Governance Board” within DHS. See ECF No. 10-1, at 19-23 (Glenn
Decl. Ex. 1, at 6-10). On September 13, 2021, senior DHS officials Robert Silvers and Samantha
Disinformation Governance Board. The opening sentence of the Memorandum noted that the
theories about the validity and security of elections,” including “disinformation surrounding the
validity of the 2020 election,” and “[d]isinformation related to the origins and effects of COVID-
19 vaccines or the efficacy of masks,” which “undercut[] public health efforts to combat the
235. The same Memorandum noted that CISA was involved in flagging content for
censorship on social-media platforms: “Leading up to the 2020 election, CISA relayed reports of
election disinformation from election officials to social media platform operators.” Id. at 20. The
Memorandum called for the Board to perform “partner engagement” with “private sector entities
236. In a subsequent Memorandum dated January 31, 2022, DHS officials indicated that
the Board’s activities would oversee extensive pre-existing social-media censorship activities by
other federal officials and agencies: “The Board will also support and coordinate … MDM work
with other departments and agencies, the private sector, and non-government actors.” Id. at 24.
This Memorandum attached the Board’s Charter, which stated that its mission was to “guide and
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support the Department’s efforts to address mis-, dis-, and mal-information.” Id. at 27. It also
stated that the Board would “harmonize and support coordination with … the private sector.” Id.
The Charter called for the Board to “coordinate, deconflict, and harmonize departmental efforts to
address MDM,” including between “DHS Components” and “interagency partners,” and “serving
as the Department’s internal and external point of contact for coordination with … the private
237. Under continuous pressure from federal officials, including Defendants herein,
social-media firms have imposed increasingly draconian censorship on core political speech about
election integrity. For example, in March 2022, YouTube imposed a one-week suspension on The
Hill, a well-known political publication covering Congress, for posts that included clips of former
President Trump’s speech at the CPAC conference and interview on Fox News, which included
claims that fraud changed the outcome of the 2020 presidential election. Gilead Edelman, Beware
https://www.wired.com/story/youtube-rigged-election-donald-trump-moderation-
misinformation/. YouTube relied on its “Elections misinformation policy,” under which it censors
“Content that advances false claims that widespread fraud, errors, or glitches changed the outcome
of select past national elections, after final election results are officially certified.” YouTube,
238. This policy is openly content- and viewpoint-based—it applies only to “select” past
national elections, and “[u]nder the policy, you can only include those claims if you explicitly
debunk or condemn them.” Edelman, supra. On information and belief, this policy is also
selective in application, as it is not applied to censor widespread, false Democratic claims that
supposed “collusion” between the Trump campaign and Russia changed the outcome of the 2016
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presidential election. And “by asking news hosts to explicitly denounce any mention of election
fraud, YouTube isn’t just making its own content decisions; it’s injecting itself into the editorial
239. On November 10, 2021, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency
(CISA), an agency within DHS, announced that it was “beefing up its disinformation and
misinformation team in the wake of a divisive presidential election that saw a proliferation of
my misinformation and disinformation team,’ CISA Director Jen Easterly said.” Id. Defendant
Easterly said that so-called “disinformation” and “misinformation” pose “a top threat for CISA,
240. Indulging in a bit of Newspeak of her own, Easterly claimed that social-media
speech is a form of “infrastructure,” and that policing speech online by the federal government
falls within her agency’s mission to protect “infrastructure,” stating that CISA is “in the business
of critical infrastructure, and the most critical infrastructure is our cognitive infrastructure, so
building that resilience to misinformation and disinformation, I think, is incredibly important.” Id.
241. Easterly announced that CISA was working directly with unnamed “partners in the
private sector” and other government agencies to police online speech: “We are going to work
with our partners in the private sector and throughout the rest of the government and at the
department to continue to ensure that the American people have the facts that they need to help
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242. With specific reference to hotly disputed election-integrity issues, which comprise
core political speech, Easterly stated that Americans should not be allowed to “pick [their] own
facts” and make their own decisions about what is true, especially regarding election security: “We
now live in a world where people talk about alternative facts, post-truth, which I think is really,
really dangerous if you get to pick your own facts, and it’s particularly corrosive when you talk
about matters of election security.” Id. Instead, she indicated, federal officials like herself should
243. CISA appears to be the focus of many of DHS’s attempts to police the content of
speech and viewpoints on social media. On information and belief, CISA maintains a number of
task forces, working groups, and similar organizations as joint government-private enterprises,
which provide avenues for government officials to push for censorship of disfavored viewpoints
Plan,” at https://www.cisa.gov/sites/default/files/publications/election_infrastructure_subsector_
specific_plan.pdf, CISA stated that it had partnered to “promote” interaction between election
officials and the Center for Technology and Civic Life, the now-notorious nonprofit funded by
Mark Zuckerberg that engaged in egregious election interference by injecting hundreds of millions
of private dollars and personnel into local election offices in heavily Democratic-favoring areas.
to include “malinformation,” i.e. truthful information that the government believes is presented
information that is “based on fact, but used out of context to mislead, harm, or manipulate.” See,
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e.g., CISA, We’re in This Together. Disinformation Stops with You. (last visited May 5, 2022),
https://www.cisa.gov/sites/default/files/publications/SLTTCOVIDToolkit_FINAL_508.pdf.
246. CISA’s same publication decries the spreading of “false treatment and prevention
measures [for COVID-19], unsubstantiated rumors regarding the origin of the virus, and more.”
Id. (emphasis added). On information and belief, “unsubstantiated rumors regarding the origin of
the [COVID-19] virus” refers to the lab-leak theory of COVID-19’s origins, which (as noted
247. CISA’s “Mis-, Dis-, and Malinformation [MDM] Planning and Incident Response
stating that “election infrastructure related MDM occurs year-round,” and “[f]alse narratives erode
trust and pose a threat to democratic transitions, especially, but not limited to, narratives around
election processes and the validity of election outcomes.” Id. The Guide defines MDM to include
“[n]arratives or content that delegitimizes election results or sows distrust in the integrity of the
available at https://www.dhs.gov/ntas/advisory/national-terrorism-advisory-system-bulletin-
environment fueled by several factors, including an online environment filled with false or
misleading narratives and conspiracy theories, and other forms of mis- dis- and mal-information
(MDM).” Id. The first critical “factor” contributing to a “heightened threat environment,”
according to the Bulletin, is “(1) the proliferation of false or misleading narratives, which sow
discord or undermine public trust in U.S. government institutions.” Id. Again, the first “[k]ey
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factor contributing to the current heightened threat environment” identified in the Bulletin is “[t]he
proliferation of false or misleading narratives, which sow discord or undermine public trust in U.S.
Grievances associated with these themes inspired violent extremist attacks during 2021.” Id.
(emphasis added). The Bulletin stated that DHS is directly coordinating with social-media
platforms to address so-called “MDM”: “DHS is working with public and private sector partners,
as well as foreign counterparts, to identify and evaluate MDM, including false or misleading
narratives and conspiracy theories spread on social media and other online platforms that endorse
or could inspire violence.” Id. And it specifically stated that CISA likewise “works with public
and private sector partners … [to] increase nationwide cybersecurity resilience.” Id.
249. This February 7, 2022 Bulletin echoed statements from prior bulletins indicating
terror threats. For example, DHS’s January 27, 2021 National Terrorism Advisory System
issues, including anger over COVID-19 restrictions [and] the 2020 election results….” Id.
Similarly, DHS’s August 13, 2021 National Terrorism Advisory System Bulletin, available at
https://www.dhs.gov/ntas/advisory/national-terrorism-advisory-system-bulletin-august-13-2021,
stated that “violent extremists … may seek to exploit the emergence of COVID-19 variants by
viewing the potential re-establishment of public health restrictions across the United States as a
rationale to conduct attacks.” Id. It stated that “domestic threat actors … continue to introduce,
amplify, and disseminate narratives online that promote violence,” and included therein
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250. On April 12, 2022, CISA published another bulletin announcing that it was
coordinating directly with social-media platforms to police “Mis, Dis, Malinformation” (which it
states that, “False or misleading information can evoke a strong emotional reaction that leads
people to share it without first looking into the facts for themselves, polluting healthy
conversations about the issues and increasing societal divisions.” Id. CISA reported that its
Countering Foreign Influence Task Force’s “mission evolved” during the Biden Administration to
address the new “information environment,” which (on information and belief) is codespeak for
ramping up online censorship: “In 2021, the CFITF officially transitioned into CISA’s MDM team,
and the mission evolved to reflect the changing information environment.” Id. CISA stated that
it coordinates directly with social media firms to address “MDM”: “The MDM team continues to
work in close coordination with interagency and private sector partners, social media companies,
academia, and international partners on a variety of projects to build resilience against malicious
251. On information and belief, the April 12, 2022, CISA bulletin indicates that CISA
works directly with social-media companies to flag content for censorship: “The MDM team
platforms….” Id. CISA boasts that it has “expanded the breadth of reporting [MDM] to include
… more social media platforms,” and that “[t]his activity leverages the rapport the MDM team has
with the social media platforms to enable shared situational awareness.” Id. On information and
belief, these statements reflect and express on ongoing practice by government officials of directly
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colluding with social-media platforms to suppress disfavored speech, viewpoints, content, and
speakers on social media. Again, these statements echo Psaki’s statement that the Biden
Administration is “flagging problematic posts for Facebook,” and Mayorkas’s statement that DHS
is “working with the tech companies that are the platform for much of the disinformation that
252. The same bulletin suggests that CISA is directly involved in such “flagging” related
undermine public confidence and sow confusion,” and claims that “the rapid evolution of accurate
information makes older, dated information a potential catalyst of confusion and distrust as well.”
Id. Thus, it claims, “[t]he MDM team supports the interagency and private sector partners’
COVID-19 response efforts via regular reporting and analysis of key pandemic-related MDM
trends.” Id. On information and belief, these “private sector partners” include social-media firms,
and the “reporting and analysis” includes flagging disfavored content for censorship.
253. On April 27, 2022, Mayorkas announced that DHS was creating a “Disinformation
https://thepostmillennial.com/breaking-biden-administration-creates-disinformation-governance-
new board designed to counter misinformation related to homeland security, with a focus
specifically on Russia and irregular migration. The board will be called the ‘Disinformation
Governance Board,’ and will be headed by executive director Nina Jankowicz.” Id. During
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Misinformation/Disinformation Governance Board.” Id. (video link at 1:40). He stated: “The goal
is to bring the resources of the Department together to address this threat.” Id.
254. Jankowicz has called for more aggressive censorship of election-related speech by
social-media platforms, and has implied that social-media censorship of election-related speech
should never relent or be reduced, stating on Twitter: “Considering the long-term damage these
lies do to our democracy, I’m dismayed about this decision [not to censor election-related speech
more aggressively]. I say this about foreign disinformation and it applies to domestic disinfo too:
Elections aren’t an end point. They’re an inflection point. Policies need to reflect that.” Id.
intended to be used, and will be used, to increase DHS’s efforts to induce and procure the
256. From its inception, the DGB was envisioned as an agency for suppressing core
political speech about election security and COVID-19 restrictions. In the internal memo to
Secretary Mayorkas advocating for the DGB’s creation, the very first two topics of
“disinformation” to be targeted were “conspiracies about the validity and security of elections,”
and “disinformation related to the origins and effects of COVID-19 vaccines or the efficacy of
masks.”
that the “Disinformation Governance Board” was formulated to create a stronger bureaucratic
structure to federal social-media censorship policies and activities that were already in full force,
both within DHS and across other federal agencies. The whistleblower documents make clear that
the DGB’s task was not to establish a censorship program, but to oversee the massive censorship
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program against free speech on these topics that already exists—both within DHS, and across the
federal government.
258. On information and belief, Defendants Robert Silvers and Samantha Vinograd
played and play a central role in DHS’s censorship activities, including but not limited to the
documents cited above strongly support this conclusion. Silvers and Vinograd co-signed the
September 13, 2021 “Memorandum for the Secretary” re “Organizing DHS Efforts to Counter
the creation of the DGB. As noted above, the opening lines of this memo state that “[t]he spread
about the validity and security of elections” and “[d]isinformation related to the origins and effects
of COVID-19 vaccines or the efficacy of masks.” The memo reflects detailed knowledge and
Silvers authored the January 31, 2022 memo to the Secretary seeking his “approval of the charter
for the Disinformation Governance Board,” and he authored a separate memorandum to DHS’s
general counsel seeking the same approval. Silvers also is listed as a participant in the April 28,
2022 meeting with Twitter executives Nick Pickles and Yoel Roth organized by Nina Jankowicz,
discussed below.
259. On April 28, 2022, Jankowicz arranged for a meeting between Secretary Mayorkas
and/or other senior DHS officials, including Undersecretary Robert Silvers, and “Twitter
executives Nick Pickles, Head of Policy, and Yoel Roth, Head of Site Integrity,” to discuss
“public-private partnerships, MDM, and countering DVE. The meeting is off the record and closed
press.” ECF No. 10-1, at 31 (Glenn Decl. Ex. 1, at 18). This was to be a cozy meeting: Jankowicz,
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who drafted the meeting brief, noted that “Nick and Yoel both know DGB Executive Director Nina
Jankowicz.” Id. The meeting was to be “an opportunity to discuss operationalizing public-private
partnerships between DHS and Twitter.” Id. In the meeting, DHS was to “Propose that Twitter
Extremism (DVE) and Irregular Migration,” and to “Thank Twitter for its continued participation
in the CISA Analytic Exchange on Election Security.” Id. DHS was also to “Ask what types of
data or information would be useful for Twitter to receive in Analytic Exchanges or other ways
5. Defendants reinforce their threats and admit further colluding to censor free speech.
260. On or around April 25, 2022—two days before DHS announced the creation of its
“Disinformation Governance Board”—it was reported that free-speech advocate Elon Musk would
acquire Twitter and make it a privately held company. Left-wing commentators widely decried
this news on the ground that free speech on Twitter would allow the spread of so-called
261. On April 25, 2022, Psaki was asked at a White House press briefing to respond to
the news that Elon Musk would acquire Twitter, and asked “does the White House have any
concern that this new agreement might have President Trump back on the platform?” White
House, Press Briefing by Press Secretary Jen Psaki, April 25, 2022, at
https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/press-briefings/2022/04/25/press-briefing-by-press-
secretary-jen-psaki-april-25-2022/.
262. Psaki responded by reiterating the threats of adverse legal consequences to Twitter
and other social media platforms, specifically referencing antitrust enforcement and Section 230
repeal: “No matter who owns or runs Twitter, the President has long been concerned about the
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power of large social media platforms … [and] has long argued that tech platforms must be held
accountable for the harms they cause. He has been a strong supporter of fundamental reforms to
achieve that goal, including reforms to Section 230, enacting antitrust reforms, requiring more
transparency, and more. And he’s encouraged that there’s bipartisan interest in Congress.” Id.
263. At the same press briefing, Psaki was asked: “Are you concerned about the kind of
purveyors of election misinformation, disinformation, health falsehoods, sort of, having more of
an opportunity to speak there on Twitter?” She responded by specifically linking the legal threats
to the social-media platforms’ failure to more aggressively censor free speech: “We’ve long talked
about and the President has long talked about his concerns about the power of social media
platforms, including Twitter and others, to spread misinformation, disinformation; the need for
264. Psaki was then asked a question that noted that “the Surgeon General has said that
misinformation about COVID amounts to a public health crisis,” and then queried, “would the
White House be interested in working with Twitter like it has in the past to continue to combat this
kind of misinformation? Or are we in a different part of the pandemic where that kind of
265. Psaki responded by reaffirming that senior officials within the White House and/or
the Administration are continuing to coordinate directly with social-media platforms to censor
disfavored speakers and content on social media, and directly linking these efforts to the repeated
threat of adverse legal action: “we engage regularly with all social media platforms about steps
that can be taken that has continued, and I’m sure it will continue. But there are also reforms that
we think Congress could take and we would support taking, including reforming Section 230,
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enacting antitrust reforms, requiring more transparency. And the President is encouraged by the
266. As a direct result of the conduct alleged herein, Defendants have achieved a great
deal of success in procuring the censorship of disfavored speakers, viewpoints, and content on
267. Among other things, they have achieved astonishing success in muzzling public
criticism of President Biden. A recent review by the Media Research Center identified 646
instances over the last two years where social-media firms censored public criticism of then-
Candidate and now-President Biden. See Joseph Vasquez and Gabriela Pariseau, Protecting the
President: Big Tech Censors Biden Criticism 646 Times Over Two Years (April 21, 2022), at
https://censortrack.org/protecting-president-big-tech-censors-biden-criticism-646-times-over-
two-years.
268. “The Media Research Center found more than 640 examples of bans, deleted
content and other speech restrictions placed on those who criticized Biden on social media over
the past two years.” Id. “MRC Free Speech America tallied 646 cases in its CensorTrack database
of pro-Biden censorship between March 10, 2020, and March 10, 2022. The tally included cases
269. “The worst cases of censorship involved platforms targeting anyone who dared to
speak about any subject related to the New York Post bombshell Hunter Biden story. … Big Tech’s
cancellation of that story helped shift the 2020 election in Biden’s favor. Twitter locked the Post’s
account for 17 days. In addition, Twitter slapped a ‘warning label’ on the GOP House Judiciary
Committee’s website for linking to the Post story.” Id. “CensorTrack logged 140 instances of
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sharing anything related to the bombshell Hunter Biden laptop story.” Id.
270. “Twitter was the most aggressive censor when it came to the Biden laptop story.
CensorTrack entries show that users could not tweet the story or pictures of the Post story.”
271. “Big Tech even axed those who blamed the current inflation crisis on Biden. For
example, Facebook censored Heritage Action, the advocacy arm of the conservative Heritage
Foundation, on March 15, simply for posting a video quoting Biden’s embarrassing statements on
energy policy. Facebook placed an interstitial, or filter, over Heritage Action’s video, suppressing
the post’s reach. The video showed Biden and officials in his administration explaining how his
272. “[T]he largest category by far included users who dared to call out Biden’s
notoriously creepy, touchy-feely behavior around women and children. The 232 cases of comedic
memes, videos, or generic posts about Biden’s conduct composed more than one-third of
CensorTrack’s total instances of users censored for criticizing the president.” Id.
273. “Big Tech even went after posts that quoted Biden’s own words and made him look
274. “The list of censorship targets included an array of prominent influencers on social
media: Trump; lawmakers like Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) and House Minority Leader Kevin
McCarthy (R-CA); news outlets like the New York Post, The Washington Free Beacon and The
Federalist; satire site The Babylon Bee; celebrities like Donald Trump Jr. and James Woods, and
media personalities like Daily Wire host Candace Owens, Salem radio host Sebastian Gorka and
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275. Most recently, social-media platforms are beginning to censor criticisms of the
Biden Administration’s attempt to redefine the word “recession” in light of recent news that the
U.S. economy has suffered two consecutive quarters of reduction in GDP. See, e.g., Economist
slams Facebook for ‘absolutely Orwellian’ fact-check upholding Biden's recession denial, Fox
orwellian-fact-check-upholding-bidens-recession-denial.
276. Thus, Defendants’ conduct alleged herein has created, with extraordinary efficacy,
a situation where Americans seeking to exercise their core free-speech right to criticize the
President of the United States are subject to aggressive prior restraint by private companies acting
at the bidding of government officials. This situation is intolerable under the First Amendment.
7. Federal officials open new fronts in their war for censorship of disfavored speech.
277. Since this lawsuit was filed, federal officials, including Defendants herein, have
expanded their social-media censorship activities and opened new fronts in their war against the
freedom of speech on social media. The frontiers of government-induced censorship are thus
expanding rapidly.
278. For example, on June 14, 2022, White House National Climate Advisor Gina
Alexander Hall, Biden climate advisor demands tech companies censor ‘disinformation’ to
https://www.foxnews.com/media/biden-climate-advisor-tech-companies-censor-disinformation-
demanded that social-media platforms engage in censorship and suppression of speech that
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279. During the event, “McCarthy skewered Big Tech companies for ‘allowing’
disinformation and cheered Congress for ‘taking action’ to enact more censorship last Thursday.”
Id. “Axios political reporter Alexi McCammond asked McCarthy how so-called ‘rampant mis-
and-disinformation around climate change online and in other platforms’ has ‘made your job
harder?’” Id. “McCarthy responded by slamming social media companies: ‘We have to get
tighter, we have to get better at communicating, and frankly, the tech companies have to stop
allowing specific individuals over and over again to spread disinformation.’” Id. (emphasis
added). “She suggested further that ‘we have to be smarter than that and we need the tech
companies to really jump in.’” Id. (emphasis added). “McCammond responded by asking: ‘Isn’t
misinformation and disinfo around climate a threat to public health itself?’ McCarthy asserted that
“McCarthy also praised Congress directly for pushing social media companies to censor
Americans: ‘We do see Congress taking action on these issues, we do see them trying to tackle the
281. Two days later, the White House announced a new task force to address, among
other things, “gendered disinformation” and “disinformation campaigns targeting women and
LGBTQI+ individuals who are public and political figures, government and civic leaders, activists,
and journalists.” White House, Memorandum on the Establishment of the White House Task Force
https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/presidential-actions/2022/06/16/memorandum-on-
the-establishment-of-the-white-house-task-force-to-address-online-harassment-and-abuse/.
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282. The June 16 Memorandum decries “online harassment and abuse”—vague terms
that, on information and belief, are deliberately adopted to sweep in constitutionally protected
speech. In particular, the Memorandum defines “online harassment and abuse” to include
“gendered disinformation,” a deliberately broad and open-ended term. Id. § 1. The Memorandum
announces plans to target such “gendered disinformation” directed at public officials and public
figures, including “women and LGBTQI+ political leaders, public figures, activists, and
journalists.” Id. The Memorandum creates a Task Force co-chaired by the Assistant to the
President for National Security Affairs, which includes the Secretary of Defense, the Attorney
283. The Task Force is charged with “developing programs and policies to address …
disinformation campaigns targeting women and LGBTQI+ individuals who are public and
political figures, government and civic leaders, activists, and journalists in the United States and
globally.” Id. § 4(a)(iv) (emphasis added). The Memorandum calls for the Task Force to consult
and coordinate with “technology experts” and “industry stakeholders,” i.e., social-media firms, to
achieve “the objectives of this memorandum,” id. § 4(b). Those “objectives,” of course, include
suppressing so-called “disinformation campaigns” against “public and political figures.” Id.
§ 4(a)(iv).
284. The Memorandum again threatens social-media platforms with adverse legal
consequences if they do not censor aggressively enough to suit federal officials: “the Task Force
shall … submit periodic recommendations to the President on policies, regulatory actions, and
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285. On June 17, 2022, twenty-one Democratic U.S. Senators and Representatives sent
a letter to Sundar Pichai, the CEO of Alphabet Inc., which owns Google, demanding that Google
censor, suppress, and de-boost search results and Google Maps results for pro-life pregnancy
resource centers. June 17, 2022 Letter of Sen. Mark Warner, et al., available at
https://reason.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/26F26BB28841042A7931EEC58AC80E08.anti-
Congress who have previously made threats of adverse legal consequences if social-media
platforms do not increase censorship—such as Senators Mark Warner, Amy Klobuchar, and
Richard Blumenthal. Id. The letter cited “research by the Center for Countering Digital Hate
(CCDH),” id.—the same organization that Jen Psaki and the White House coordinated with to
demand the censorship of the so-called “Disinformation Dozen,” and that coordinated the
demonetization of Plaintiff Hoft from Google. The letter describes pro-life pregnancy resource
centers as “fake clinics,” and demands that Google proactively censor search results, mapping
results, and advertisements relating to such clinics. Id. The letter demands that Google “limit the
appearance of anti-abortion fake clinics or so-called ‘crisis pregnancy centers’ in Google search
results, Google Ads, and on Google Maps”; that Google “add user-friendly disclaimers that clearly
indicate whether or not a search result does or does not provide abortions”; and that Google take
“additional steps to ensure that users are receiving accurate information when they search for
health care services like abortion on Google Search and Google Maps.” Id.
286. Defendants swiftly doubled down on this demand for social-media censorship of
pro-life pregnancy resource centers. On July 8, 2022, the President signed an Executive Order
“aimed at protecting abortion rights.” Sandhya Raman, Biden issues executive order responding
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executive-order-responding-to-abortion-ruling/. The order directs HHS, DOJ, and the FTC “to
examine ways to … curb the spread of misinformation related to abortion.” Id. The order is
at https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/presidential-actions/2022/07/08/executive-order-
“The Secretary of Health and Human Services shall, in consultation with the Attorney General and
the Chair of the FTC, consider options to address deceptive or fraudulent practices related to
reproductive healthcare services, including online, and to protect access to accurate information.”
Id.
E. Defendants’ Conduct Has Inflicted and Continues to Inflict Grave Injuries on Plaintiffs,
Missourians, Louisianans, and all Americans.
287. Defendants’ conduct, as alleged herein, has inflicted and continues to inflict grave,
ongoing injuries on Plaintiffs, Missourians and Louisianans, and all Americans. Many of these
injuries are detailed in the previously filed Declarations submitted in support of the States’ Motion
for Preliminary Injunction, ECF Nos. 10-2 to 10-15, which are attached hereto as Exhibits B to O,
288. First, the Defendants’ conduct has inflicted and continues to inflict at least eight
forms of imminent, continuing, irreparable injury on the Plaintiff States, Missouri and Louisiana.
289. First, both Missouri and Louisiana have adopted fundamental policies favoring the
freedom of speech, including on social media. Missouri’s Constitution provides: “[N]o law shall
be passed impairing the freedom of speech, no matter by what means communicated… [E]very
person shall be free to say, write or publish, or otherwise communicate whatever he will on any
subject….” MO. CONST. art. I, § 8. Louisiana’s Constitution provides: “No law shall curtail or
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restrain the freedom of speech or of the press. Every person may speak, write, and publish his
sentiments on any subject, but is responsible for abuse of that freedom.” LA. CONST. art. I, § 7.
The federal censorship program directly undermines Missouri’s and Louisiana’s fundamental
policies favoring the freedom of speech, and thus it inflicts a clear and direct injury on the States’
sovereignty. See Texas v. United States, 809 F.3d 134, 153 (5th Cir. 2015).
290. Second, the States and their agencies and political subdivisions have suffered
Justice—the office of its Attorney General—was directly censored on YouTube for posting video
footage of Louisianans criticizing mask mandates and COVID-19 lockdown measures on August
18, 2021—just after the federal Defendants’ most vociferous calls for censorship of COVID
“misinformation.” Bosch Decl. ¶ 7. A Louisiana state legislator was censored by Facebook when
he posted content addressing vaccinating children against COVID-19. Bosch Decl. ¶ 9. St. Louis
county-wide mask mandates, at which some citizens made public comments opposing mask
mandates. Flesh Decl. ¶ 7. YouTube censored the entire videos of four public meetings, removing
the content, because some citizens publicly expressed views that masks are ineffective. Id.
291. Third, State agencies—such as the Offices of the States’ Attorneys General—
closely track and rely on free speech on social media to understand their citizens’ true thoughts
and concerns. See, e.g., Flesch Decl. ¶ 4 (“I monitor these trends on a daily or even hourly
basis…”); Bosch Decl. ¶ 6. This allows them to craft messages and public policies that are actually
responsive to their citizens’ concerns. Flesch Decl. ¶ 5; Bosch Decl. ¶¶ 4-6. Censorship of social-
media speech directly interferes with this critical state interest, because it “directly interferes with
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[our] ability to follow, measure, and understand the nature and degree of [constituents’] concerns.”
Flesh Decl. ¶ 6.
292. Fourth, social-media censorship thwarts the States’ ability to provide free, fair, and
open political processes that allow citizens to petition their government and advocate for policy
changes. Social-media censorship has perverted state and local political processes by artificially
restricting access to the channels of advocacy to one side of various issues. For example, social-
media censorship prevented Louisiana advocacy groups from organizing effectively to advocate
in favor of legislative action on issues of great public import. Hines Decl. ¶¶ 13-14. Likewise,
advocate against mandatory masking at his local school district, a political subdivision of the State.
McCollum Decl. ¶¶ 9-17 ; Gulmire Decl. ¶¶ 11-16, 18-19. Such censorship—which directly
interferes with citizens’ ability to petition their government—thwarts the States’ interest in
293. Fifth, federally induced social-media censorship directly affects Missouri, because
it has resulted in the extensive censorship of Plaintiff Dr. Bhattacharya, who serves as an expert
witness for Missouri in a series of lawsuits challenging mask and vaccine mandates. See
Bhattacharya Decl. ¶ 4. Censorship of Dr. Bhattacharya reduces the message and impact of
Missouri’s own retained expert witness. See id. ¶¶ 17-32. Likewise, the Missouri Attorney
General’s Office relied heavily on the high-quality German survey study of 26,000 schoolchildren,
finding that 68 percent reported harms from masking in school, in its lawsuits challenging school
mask mandates. That study was censored on social media as a result of Defendants’ campaign,
and Missouri was lucky to find it because it is in German and not cited on social media. “Because
online censorship acts as a prior restraint on speech,” Missouri “will never know exactly how much
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speech … on social media never reaches [our] eyes because it is censored in advance, or as soon
294. Sixth, Missouri and Louisiana have a quasi-sovereign interest in protecting the free-
speech rights of “a sufficiently substantial segment of its population,” and preventing ultra vires
actions against those rights. Alfred L. Snapp & Son, Inc. v. Puerto Rico, ex rel., Barez, 458 U.S.
592, 607 (1982). This falls within Missouri’s and Louisiana’s “quasi-sovereign interest in the
health and well-being—both physical and economic—of its residents in general.” Id. This injury
“suffices to give the State standing to sue as parens patriae” because “the injury” to Missourians’
and Louisianans’ free-speech and free-expression rights “is one that the State[s] … would likely
attempt to address through [their] sovereign lawmaking powers.” Id. at 607. Indeed, they have
done so. See, e.g., MO. CONST., art. I, § 8; LA. CONST., art. I, § 7.
295. Seventh, Missouri and Louisiana “ha[ve] an interest in securing observance of the
terms under which [they] participate[] in the federal system.” Alfred L. Snapp, 458 U.S. at 607–
08. This means bringing suit to “ensur[e] that the State and its residents are not excluded from the
benefits that are to flow from participation in the federal system.” Id. at 608. Free-speech rights,
and protection from ultra vires actions destroying them, are foremost among the “benefits that are
to flow from participation in the federal system.” Id. Missouri and Louisiana “have an interest,
independent of the benefits that might accrue to any particular individual, in assuring that the
benefits of the federal system are not denied to its general population.” Id.
296. Eighth, Missouri and Louisiana have a unique interest in advancing, protecting, and
vindicating the rights of their citizens who are listeners, readers, and audiences of social-media
speech. As noted above, the First Amendment protects the rights of the speakers’ audiences, such
as listeners and readers, to have access to protected speech. See, e.g., Bd. of Educ., Island Trees
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Union Free Sch. Dist. No. 26 v. Pico, 457 U.S. 853, 867 (1982). As a result of Defendants’
censorship, the States’ many citizens, as readers and followers of social-media speech, suffer an
injury that is individually too diffuse to warrant filing their own lawsuits, yet the injury is all the
greater because it is spread among millions of readers. Bantam Books, Inc. v. Sullivan, 372 U.S.
58, 64 n.6 (1963) (holding that, where one plaintiff “is not likely to sustain sufficient … injury to
induce him to seek judicial vindication of his [First Amendment] rights,” a plaintiff with a greater
stake may assert them, lest “infringements of freedom of the press may too often go unremedied”).
The States have a “close relationship” with their citizens, as readers and listeners of social-media
speech, because they are specifically authorized by state law to vindicate those rights. And there
is a “hindrance” to their citizens’ asserting their own rights, because each individual injury is too
diffuse to warrant litigation. See Kowalski v. Tesmer, 543 U.S. 125, 130 (2004); Secretary of State
of Md. v. Joseph H. Munson Co., Inc., 467 U.S. 947, 956-57 (1984).
297. All these injuries to the State Plaintiffs and their citizens are continuing and
2. Ongoing injuries inflicted on the private Plaintiffs and their social-media followings.
298. The private Plaintiffs Bhattacharya, Hines, Hoft, Kheriaty, and Kulldorff, and their
social-media audiences and/or potential social-media audiences (i.e., the larger audiences who
would hear them if they were not censored)—who include thousands or millions of Missourians
and Louisianans—have suffered and are suffering grave and ongoing injuries as well. Identical
injuries afflict many similarly situated speakers and audiences who have been affected by the
299. Government-induced online censorship affects the private Plaintiffs and enormous
segments of Missouri’s and Louisiana’s populations. The censorship affects speakers with all sizes
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networking sites, Flesch Decl. ¶ 9; to social-media titans, such as Plaintiff Jim Hoft, who is one of
the most influential online voices in the country, with over a million social-media followers, Hoft
Decl. ¶¶ 2-3. Censorship affects some of the most highly credentialed physicians in the world,
speaking on matters of core competence, such as Plaintiffs Bhattacharya, Kulldroff, and Kheriaty,
scientists and medical professors at Stanford, Harvard, and the University of California. See
followers, including the private Plaintiffs’ accounts, which include many thousands of followers
in Missouri and Louisiana. See Hoft Decl. ¶ 3 (Missouri-based speaker with 400,000 Twitter
followers); Kulldorff Decl. ¶ 7 (“250,800 followers on Twitter and 13,400 contacts and followers
on LinkedIn”); Kheriaty Decl. ¶ 3 (158,000 Twitter followers, even though artificially capped by
Twitter); Allen Decl. ¶ 15 (the entire YouTube channel of a conservative talk-radio station based
in Missouri); Changizi Decl. ¶ 7 (37,000 Twitter followers); Senger Decl. ¶ 3 (112,000 Twitter
followers); Kotzin Decl. ¶¶ 3-4 (31,900 followers); Kitchen Decl. ¶ 32 (over 44,000 Twitter
followers). These declarants provide only a representative slice of the enormous suppressions
inflicted by Defendants’ conduct on countless similarly situated speakers and audiences, including
great public concern. This includes speech relating to COVID-19 policies—especially speech
criticizing the government’s response to COVID-19. See, e.g., Hoft Decl. ¶¶ 6, 12; Bhattacharya
Decl. ¶¶ 15-31; Kulldorff Decl. ¶¶ 14-30; Kheriaty Decl. ¶¶ 16-17; Hines Decl. ¶¶ 7-14. It also
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extends to speech about election security and integrity, including core political speech. See, e.g.,
Hoft Decl. ¶¶ 7-8, 14; Allen Decl. ¶ 14-15; Flesh Decl. ¶ 8. And the censorship targets speech
simply because it is critical of the President of the United States. See, e.g., Hoft Decl. ¶ 10.
through a wide variety of methods, ranging from complete bans, temporary bans, insidious
“shadow bans” (where neither the user nor his audience is notified of the suppression), deboosting,
de-platforming, de-monetizing, restricting access to content, imposing warning labels that require
click-through to access content, and many other ways. These include temporary and permanent
suspensions of many speakers. See, e.g., Hoft Decl. ¶¶ 6-8; Kheriaty Decl. ¶ 16; Bhattacharya
Decl. ¶ 16; Changizi Decl. ¶¶ 18-23; Allen Decl. ¶ 15; see also Bhattacharya Decl. ¶ 31 (“Twitter,
posts and videos. See, e.g., Hoft Decl. ¶ 14; Bhattacharya Decl. ¶¶ 17-18; Changizi Decl. ¶ 36. It
includes demonetization by technology firms, see Hoft Decl. ¶ 19, and deboosting search results
to bury the most relevant results, Bhattacharya Decl. ¶ 16. It includes suppressing posts in news
feeds, and imposing advisory labels and “sensitive content” labels, making it more difficult to
access specific content. See, e.g., Hoft Decl. ¶ 13; Changizi Decl. ¶ 27-28. It includes insidious
methods of censorship like surreptitious de-boosting and “shadow-banning,” where the censor
does not notify the speaker or the audience of the censorship. Many speakers discover through
circumstantial methods that they have been shadow-banned. See, e.g., Kheriaty Decl. ¶¶ 14-15. It
includes indirect methods of shadow-banning such as artificially limiting the number of followers
of a disfavored account. Kheriaty Decl. ¶¶ 12-13; Changizi Decl. ¶ 31. All these forms of
censorship directly impact Plaintiffs and their social-media audiences, and they continue to do so.
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303. Such censorship has compounded effects on the freedom of expression, creating
massive distortions in the free marketplace of ideas. As noted above, much speech is suppressed
in secret, so the speakers and audience never know whether or how much speech was silenced.
See, e.g., Kheriaty Decl. ¶¶ 14-15. Censorship of the principal speaker, moreover, deters other
speakers from re-tweeting, re-posting, or “amplifying” the content, which suppresses even more
speech and further artificially reduces the speakers’ audience. See Hoft Decl. ¶ 15. And,
what they say to avoid the (often financially catastrophic) consequences of a suspension or ban.
See, e.g., Hoft Decl. ¶ 16; Bhattacharya Decl. ¶ 31; Kheriaty Decl. ¶ 16.
304. Like the injuries to the State Plaintiffs and their citizens, these injuries to the private
Plaintiffs and their audiences are imminent and ongoing, and they constitute irreparable harm.
305. For the reasons alleged in greater detail herein, Defendants’ conduct has directly
caused Plaintiffs’ injuries. By their campaign of threats, coordination, and collusion, Defendants
have successfully induced social-media platforms to impose acts of censorship that have directly
injured all Plaintiffs and their audiences. These are acts of censorship that the social-media
companies, but for Defendants’ unlawful conduct, otherwise would not have imposed.
306. Overwhelming evidence supports the conclusion that Defendants have caused
censorship. As the allegations herein emphasize, there is powerful support for the conclusion of
direct causation between Defendants’ conduct and Plaintiffs’ free-speech injuries. This evidence
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307. First, as alleged above, in the absence of Defendants’ campaign for social-media
censorship, market forces and other incentives would have and did restrain social-media platforms
from engaging in the social-media censorship alleged herein. Notably, as noted above, prior to
308. Second, as alleged above, the campaign of threats of adverse legal consequences
from Defendants and their political allies—directly linked to demands for greater censorship—are
highly motivating to social-media platforms, because they address matters of great import and
potential legal vulnerability, such as Section 230 immunity and the prospect of antitrust
enforcement. These threats became even more motivating at the beginning of 2021, when
Defendants and their allies took control of the Executive Branch, with all its powerful agencies,
and both Houses of Congress, indicating that they had the ability to carry out their threats. By
responding to these threats, social-media platforms are merely “reacting in predictable ways,” and
their greatly increased censorship is merely “the predictable effect of Government action on the
decisions of third parties.” Department of Commerce v. New York, 139 S. Ct. 2551, 2566 (2019).
Defendants’ demands for increased censorship—strongly supports the conclusion that Defendants’
conduct has caused the censorship of free speech on social media. As alleged further herein, there
followed demands for censorship from federal officials, including Defendants. These include, but
are not limited to, (1) the en masse deplatforming of the “Disinformation Dozen” after Jen Psaki
publicly demanded it; (2) the censorship of the Great Barrington Declaration and Plaintiffs
Bhattacharya and Kulldorff just after a senior HHS official called for a “quick and devastating …
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take-down” of the Declaration, Bhattacharya Decl. ¶¶ 6, 14; id. ¶¶ 15-31; and (3) Twitter’s
deplatforming of Alex Berenson just after the President stated, “They’re killing people” and Dr.
310. Fourth, Defendants have openly admitted that they and other federal officials are
examples, Jen Psaki publicly admits that “we’re flagging problematic posts for Facebook” and that
“they certainly understand what our asks are.” Secretary Mayorkas states that “we’re working
together … with the tech companies that are the platform for much of the disinformation that
reaches the American public, how they can better use their terms of use to really strengthen the
legitimate use of their very powerful platforms and prevent harm from occurring,” and that this
collaboration is happening “across the federal enterprise.” Easterly states that she works directly
“with our partners in the private sector and throughout the rest of the government and at the
department to continue to ensure that the American people have the facts that they need to help
protect our critical infrastructure.” CISA openly states that its “MDM team serves as a switchboard
for routing disinformation concerns to appropriate social media platforms.” And so forth.
311. Fifth, social-media platforms openly admit that they consult with and rely on
government officials to identify what content to censor. For example, Facebook’s “COVID and
Vaccine Policy Updates and Protections” states that Facebook does “not allow false claims about
the vaccines or vaccination programs which public health experts have advised us could lead to
COVID-19 vaccine rejection.” (emphasis added). As noted above, “[a] Facebook spokesperson
said the company has partnered with government experts, health authorities and researchers to take
‘aggressive action against misinformation about COVID-19 and vaccines to protect public
health.’” Twitter, likewise, admits that it coordinates with government officials in identifying what
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to censor. For example, its “Civic integrity policy” states that Twitter “will label or remove false
process” and that it “work[s] with select government and civil society partners in these countries
to provide additional channels for reporting and expedited review” of so-called “misinformation.”
Twitter’s “COVID-19 misleading information policy” states that it “primarily enforce[s] this
policy in close coordination with trusted partners, including public health authorities, NGOs and
governments, and continue[s] to use and consult with information from those sources when
reviewing content.” Similarly, YouTube’s “COVID-19 medical misinformation policy” states that
“YouTube doesn’t allow content that spreads medical misinformation that contradicts local health
YouTube’s policies on COVID-19 are subject to change in response to changes to global or local
312. Sixth, the content of the censorship decisions evidences Defendants’ direct
influence on censorship, because those decisions focus on the areas of concern for Defendants and
uniformly favor Defendants’ preferred narratives. For example, Dr. Kheriaty notes that “[t]he
pattern of content censored on these social media platforms mirrors closely the CDC and Biden
administration policies…. [A]ny content that challenges those federal policies is subject to severe
censorship, without explanation, on Twitter and YouTube—even when the information shared is
taken straight from peer-reviewed scientific literature.” Kheriaty Decl. ¶ 18. Regarding shadow-
banning in particular, he observes that “[t]he posts most subject to this were those that challenged
the federal government’s preferred covid policies.” Kheriaty Decl. ¶ 15. Likewise, the censorship
of social-media speech about COVID-19 and election security directly reflects the calls for
censorship from federal officials. Hoft Decl. ¶¶ 4, 16. Censorship of Hoft’s speech has focused
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on topics specifically targeted for censorship by DHS as “domestic terrorism,” including in its
National Terrorism Advisory System Bulletin from February 7, 2022. Hoft Decl. ¶ 20; id. Ex. 7,
suspends only those who question the wisdom and efficacy of government restrictions, or who cast
doubt on the safety or efficacy of the vaccines,” but “there are no examples of Twitter suspending
individuals who have spread misinformation from the other side—by, for example, exaggerating
the efficacy of masks or the threat the virus poses to children.” Changizi Decl. ¶¶ 50-51; see also
Kotzin Decl. ¶ 33. As Dr. Bhattacharya notes, “Having observed and lived through the
government-driven censorship of the Great Barrington Declaration and its co-authors, it is clear to
me that these attacks were politically driven by government actors.” Bhattacharya Decl. ¶ 32.
whistleblower documents, and the CDC emails released last week—demonstrate beyond any
possible doubt that Defendants are directly involved in and are directing social-media censorship
decisions, both by identifying high-level topics of censorship and by identifying specific posts and
types of postings for censorship. CDC and Census Bureau officials demonstrate that this direct,
collusive involvement of federal officials in specific and general censorship decisions happens on
a wide scale, and the DGB documents quoted above indicate that such “MDM”-censorship
314. For all these reasons, among others, it is perfectly clear that Defendants’ conduct
has caused the general and specific censorship policies and decisions alleged herein.
315. For similar reasons, an order and judgment from this Court preventing the
continuation of Defendants’ conduct will redress Plaintiffs’ ongoing injuries. Defendants’ conduct
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has caused social-media platforms to engage in the censorship decisions that have injured
Plaintiffs, and an order ceasing Defendants’ conduct will alleviate those injuries.
316. Defendants are continuing, and are likely to continue, to engage in the unlawful
317. All foregoing Paragraphs are incorporated as if set forth fully herein.
318. The First Amendment prohibits Congress from making laws “abridging the
freedom of speech.” U.S. CONST. amend. I. This prohibition applies to restrictions on speech by
all branches of the federal government. Matal v. Tam, 137 S. Ct. 1744, 1757 (2017).
319. The Constitutions of Missouri, Louisiana, and every other State provide similar or
320. An enormous amount of speech and expression occurs of social media. Social-
media platforms have become, in many ways, “the modern public square.” Packingham, 137 S.
Ct. at 1737. Social media platforms provide “perhaps the most powerful mechanisms available to
a private citizen to make his or her voice heard.” Id. They also permit private citizens to interact
321. Social-media platforms are akin to common carriers and/or public accommodations
that, under longstanding statutory and common-law doctrines, should be subject to non-
discrimination rules in accessing their platforms, which discrimination on the basis of content and
322. “Historically, at least two legal doctrines limited a company’s right to exclude.”
Knight First Amendment Institute, 141 S. Ct. at 1222 (Thomas, J., concurring). “First, our legal
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system and its British predecessor have long subjected certain businesses, known as common
carriers, to special regulations, including a general requirement to serve all comers.” Id. “Second,
governments have limited a company’s right to exclude when that company is a public
themselves out to the public but do not ‘carry’ freight, passengers, or communications.” Id.
Absent the artificial immunity created by the overbroad interpretations of Section 230 immunity,
these legal doctrines—along with private and free-market forces—would impose a powerful check
323. As alleged further herein, through Section 230 immunity and other actions, the
federal government has abrogated these legal restraints on social-media censorship; it has
artificially subsidized, encouraged, and enabled the emergence of a small group of immensely
powerful social-media companies; and it has conferred on that cartel powerful legal shields
protecting its ability to censor and suppress speech on social media based on content and viewpoint
with impunity.
324. As alleged further herein, Defendants have coerced, threatened, and pressured
social-media platforms to censor disfavored speakers and viewpoints by using threats of adverse
325. As alleged further herein, Defendants also hold out the “carrot” of continued
protection under Section 230 and antitrust law, and thus preserving the legally favored status of
social-media platforms. Commentators have aptly summarized this carrot-stick dynamic: “Section
230 is the carrot, and there’s also a stick: Congressional Democrats have repeatedly made explicit
threats to social-media giants if they failed to censor speech those lawmakers disfavored.” Vivek
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Ramaswamy and Jed Rubenfeld, Save the Constitution from Big Tech: Congressional threats and
inducements make Twitter and Facebook censorship a free-speech violation, WALL STREET
JOURNAL (Jan. 11, 2021). “Facebook and Twitter probably wouldn’t have become behemoths
without Section 230.” Id. “Either Section 230 or congressional pressure alone might be sufficient
326. As alleged further herein, as a result of such threats and inducements, Defendants
are now directly colluding with social-media platforms to censor disfavored speakers and
viewpoints, including by pressuring them to censor certain content and speakers, and “flagging”
disfavored content and speakers for censorship. Defendants have thus engaged in joint action with
private parties and acted in concert with private parties to deprive Plaintiffs, Missourians,
Louisianans, and Americans of their constitutional rights under the First Amendment and related
state-law rights.
327. Defendants’ actions constitute government action for at least five independently
sufficient reasons: (1) absent federal intervention, common-law and statutory doctrines, as well as
voluntary conduct and natural free-market forces, would have restrained the emergence of
censorship and suppression of speech of disfavored speakers, content, and viewpoint on social
media; and yet (2) through Section 230 of the CDA and other actions, the federal government
subsidized, fostered, encouraged, and empowered the creation of a small number of massive
social-media companies with disproportionate ability to censor and suppress speech on the basis
of speaker, content, and viewpoint; (3) such inducements as Section 230 and other legal benefits
(such as the absence of antitrust enforcement) constitute an immensely valuable benefit to social-
media platforms to do the bidding of federal government officials; (4) federal officials—including,
most notably, Defendants herein—have repeatedly and aggressively threatened to remove these
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legal benefits and impose other adverse consequences on social-media platforms if they do not
increase censorship and suppression of disfavored speakers, content, and viewpoints; and (5)
Defendants herein, conspiring and colluding both with each other and social-media firms, have
directly coordinated with social-media platforms to identify disfavored speakers, viewpoints, and
content and have procured the actual censorship and suppression of them on social media. These
factors, considered either individually or collectively, establish that the social-media censorship
alleged herein constitutes government action. These actions have dramatically impacted the
fundamental right of free speech in Missouri, Louisiana, and America, both on social media and
elsewhere.
328. As alleged herein, Defendants have acted in concert both with each other, and with
others, to violate the First Amendment and state-level free speech rights.
329. Defendants’ actions violate the First Amendment and analogous state constitutional
protections. The First Amendment is violated where, as here, “if the government coerces or
induces it to take action the government itself would not be permitted to do, such as censor
expression of a lawful viewpoint.” Biden v. Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia Univ.,
141 S. Ct. 1220, 1226 (2021) (Thomas, J., concurring). “The government cannot accomplish
through threats of adverse government action what the Constitution prohibits it from doing
directly.” Id.
330. The censorship and suppression of speech that Defendants have induced social-
media platforms to impose on disfavored speakers, content, and viewpoints constitute forms of
prior restraints on speech, which are the most severe restrictions and the most difficult to justify
under the First Amendment. “One obvious implication of” the First Amendment’s text “is that the
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government usually may not impose prior restraints on speech.” Houston Cmty. Coll. Sys. v.
331. These actions have injured Plaintiffs, as well as Missouri’s, Louisiana’s, and other
States’ citizens, both speakers and users of social media, and they have injured Missourians,
Louisianans, and Americans who do not use social media by their predictable effect on the
332. These actions have also injured Plaintiffs, as well as Missouri’s, Louisiana’s, and
other States’ citizens, by broadly chilling the exercise of free-speech rights on social-media
platforms. This injures the First Amendment and state-level rights of all citizens, both users and
non-users of social media, by reducing the availability of free speech in a free marketplace of ideas.
Much social-media speech is available to non-users of social media on the internet, and social-
media users convey speech and information learned on social media platforms to non-users of
social media through many other means. Suppressing speech on social media, therefore, directly
impacts the First Amendment rights of non-social media users, as well as users.
333. Defendants’ interference with First Amendment and state free-speech rights of
Plaintiffs and virtually all Missourians, Louisianans, and Americans is per se unconstitutional, and
334. Defendants’ interference with First Amendment rights of Plaintiffs and virtually all
Missourians and Louisianans also interferes with rights that the States guaranteed to them under
their respective state constitutions. Defendants’ interference thus undermines the system of rights
the States provided to their citizens, effectively limiting the reach of each State’s fundamental law
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335. Defendants’ conduct inflicts imminent, ongoing, and continuing irreparable injury
336. This Court has inherent authority to declare, enjoin, restrain, enter judgment, and
impose penalties on Defendants and other federal actors, and those acting in concert with them, to
prevent and restrain violations of federal law, including the First Amendment. “The ability to sue
to enjoin unconstitutional actions by state and federal officers is the creation of courts of equity,
and reflects a long history of judicial review of illegal executive action, tracing back to England.”
Armstrong v. Exceptional Child Center, Inc., 575 U.S. 320, 327 (2015).
337. All foregoing Paragraphs are incorporated as if set forth fully herein.
free-speech rights.
339. “An agency’s power is no greater than that delegated to it by Congress.” Lyng v.
Payne, 476 U.S. 926, 937 (1986). Agency actions that exceed the agency’s statutory authority are
340. No statute authorizes any Defendants—including but not limited to White House
officials, HHS officials, DHS officials, and other senior federal officials—to engage in the course
of conduct regarding the censorship and suppression of speech on social media as alleged herein.
officials, HHS officials, DHS officials, and other senior federal officials—to identify what
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censor and suppress such speech; and/or to demand that private companies turn over information
about speech and speakers on their platforms in the interest of investigating “misinformation,”
342. Further, the interpretation of any statute to authorize these actions would violate the
non-delegation doctrine, the canon of constitutional avoidance, the major-questions doctrine, the
Supreme Court’s clear-statement rules, and other applicable principles of interpretation. No statute
343. Defendants and the federal officials acting in concert with them, by adopting the
censorship policies and conduct identified herein, have acted and are acting without any lawful
authority whatsoever, and without any colorable basis for the exercise of authority. No federal
statute, regulation, constitutional provision, or other legal authority authorizes their social-media-
344. Defendants’ ultra vires actions inflict ongoing irreparable harm on Plaintiffs, as
alleged herein.
345. All foregoing Paragraphs are incorporated as if set forth fully herein.
346. Defendants HHS, NIAID, CDC, Becerra, Murthy, Crawford, and Fauci are referred
347. As set forth herein, the HHS Defendants’ conduct is unlawful, arbitrary and
348. The APA authorizes courts to hold unlawful and set aside final agency actions that
are found to be: “(A) arbitrary, capricious, an abuse of discretion, or otherwise not in accordance
with law; (B) contrary to constitutional right, power, privilege, or immunity; (C) in excess of
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statutory jurisdiction, authority, or limitations, or short of statutory right; (D) without observance
349. Defendants HHS, CDC, and NIAID are “agencies” within the meaning of the APA.
Defendants Becerra, Fauci, and Murthy, in their official capacities, are the heads of federal
agencies.
350. The HHS Defendants’ conduct alleged herein constitutes “final agency action”
because it “marks the consummation of the agency’s decisionmaking process.” Bennett v. Spear,
520 U.S. 154, 178 (1997) (quotation marks omitted). Further, it is action from by which “rights
or obligations have been determined,” and “from which legal consequences will flow.” Id.
suppress disfavored speakers, content, and speech are final agency actions of this sort. Such
actions reflect the completion of a decisionmaking process with a result that will directly affect
Plaintiffs, Missourians, Louisianans, and Americans. Franklin v. Massachusetts, 505 U.S. 788,
797 (1992). The actions of Defendants alleged herein, on information and belief, reflect and result
from a specific, discrete, and identifiable decision of Defendants to adopt an unlawful social-media
censorship program.
351. The HHS Defendants’ conduct is arbitrary, capricious, and an abuse of discretion
because it was not based on any reasoned decisionmaking, ignores critical aspects of the problem,
disregards settled reliance interests, rests on pretextual post hoc justifications, and overlooks the
unlawful nature of the HHS Defendants’ conduct, among other reasons. 5 U.S.C. § 706(2)(A).
352. The HHS Defendants’ conduct is “contrary to constitutional right, power, privilege,
or immunity” because it violates the First Amendment rights of Plaintiffs and virtually all
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Missourians and Louisianans for the reasons discussed herein and in Count One, supra. 5 U.S.C.
§ 706(2)(B).
353. The HHS Defendants conduct is “in excess of statutory jurisdiction, authority, or
limitations, or short of statutory right,” because no statute authorizes any of the conduct alleged
354. The HHS Defendants’ conduct was “without observance of procedure required by
law” because it is a substantive policy or series of policies that affect legal rights that require notice
and comment, and yet they never engaged in any notice-and-comment process, or other process to
obtain input from the public, before engaging in these unlawful agency policies. 5 U.S.C.
§ 706(2)(D).
355. The HHS Defendants’ conduct is unlawful under the APA and should be set aside.
356. All foregoing Paragraphs are incorporated as if set forth fully herein.
357. Defendants DHS, CISA, Mayorkas, Easterly, Silvers, Vinograd, and Jankowicz are
358. As set forth herein, the DHS Defendants’ conduct is unlawful, arbitrary and
359. The APA authorizes courts to hold unlawful and set aside final agency actions that
are found to be: “(A) arbitrary, capricious, an abuse of discretion, or otherwise not in accordance
with law; (B) contrary to constitutional right, power, privilege, or immunity; (C) in excess of
statutory jurisdiction, authority, or limitations, or short of statutory right; (D) without observance
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360. Defendants DHS and CISA are “agencies” within the meaning of the APA.
Defendants Mayorkas and Easterly, in their official capacities, are the heads of federal agencies.
361. The DHS Defendants’ conduct alleged herein constitutes “final agency action”
because it “marks the consummation of the agency’s decisionmaking process.” Bennett v. Spear,
520 U.S. 154, 178 (1997) (quotation marks omitted). Further, it is action from by which “rights
or obligations have been determined,” and “from which legal consequences will flow.” Id.
suppress disfavored speakers, content, and speech are final agency actions of this sort. Such
actions reflect the completion of a decisionmaking process with a result that will directly affect
Plaintiffs, Missourians, Louisianans, and Americans. Franklin v. Massachusetts, 505 U.S. 788,
797 (1992). The actions of Defendants alleged herein, on information and belief, reflect and result
from a specific, discrete, and identifiable decision of Defendants to adopt an unlawful social-media
censorship program.
362. The DHS Defendants’ conduct is arbitrary, capricious, and an abuse of discretion
because it was not based on any reasoned decisionmaking, ignores critical aspects of the problem,
disregards settled reliance interests, rests on pretextual post hoc justifications, and overlooks the
unlawful nature of the DHS Defendants’ conduct, among other reasons. 5 U.S.C. § 706(2)(A).
363. The DHS Defendants’ conduct is “contrary to constitutional right, power, privilege,
or immunity” because it violates the First Amendment and state free-speech rights of Plaintiffs
and virtually all Missourians, Louisianans, and Americans for the reasons discussed herein and in
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364. The DHS Defendants conduct is “in excess of statutory jurisdiction, authority, or
limitations, or short of statutory right,” because no statute authorizes any of the conduct alleged
365. The DHS Defendants’ conduct was “without observance of procedure required by
law” because it is a substantive policy or series of policies that affect legal rights that require notice
and comment, and yet they never engaged in any notice-and-comment process, or other process to
obtain input from the public, before engaging in these unlawful agency policies. 5 U.S.C.
§ 706(2)(D).
366. The DHS Defendants’ conduct is unlawful under the APA and should be set aside.
367. All foregoing Paragraphs are incorporated as if set forth fully herein.
368. Defendants Department of Commerce, Census Bureau, and Shopkorn are referred
369. As set forth herein, the Census Defendants’ conduct is unlawful, arbitrary and
capricious, and in excess of statutory authority under the Administrative Procedure Act.
370. The APA authorizes courts to hold unlawful and set aside final agency actions that
are found to be: “(A) arbitrary, capricious, an abuse of discretion, or otherwise not in accordance
with law; (B) contrary to constitutional right, power, privilege, or immunity; (C) in excess of
statutory jurisdiction, authority, or limitations, or short of statutory right; (D) without observance
371. Defendants Department of Commerce and Census Bureau are “agencies” within
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372. The Census Defendants’ conduct alleged herein constitutes “final agency action”
because it “marks the consummation of the agency’s decisionmaking process.” Bennett v. Spear,
520 U.S. 154, 178 (1997) (quotation marks omitted). Further, it is action by which “rights or
obligations have been determined,” and “from which legal consequences will flow.” Id.
suppress disfavored speakers, content, and speech are final agency actions of this sort. Such
actions reflect the completion of a decisionmaking process with a result that will directly affect
Plaintiffs, Missourians, Louisianans, and Americans. Franklin v. Massachusetts, 505 U.S. 788,
797 (1992). The actions of Defendants alleged herein, on information and belief, reflect and result
from a specific, discrete, and identifiable decision of Defendants to adopt an unlawful social-media
censorship program.
373. The Census Defendants’ conduct is arbitrary, capricious, and an abuse of discretion
because it was not based on any reasoned decisionmaking, ignores critical aspects of the problem,
disregards settled reliance interests, rests on pretextual post hoc justifications, and overlooks the
unlawful nature of the Census Defendants’ conduct, among other reasons. 5 U.S.C. § 706(2)(A).
privilege, or immunity” because it violates the First Amendment and state free-speech rights of
Plaintiffs and virtually all Missourians, Louisianans, and Americans for the reasons discussed
375. The Census Defendants conduct is “in excess of statutory jurisdiction, authority, or
limitations, or short of statutory right,” because no statute authorizes any of the conduct alleged
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376. The Census Defendants’ conduct was “without observance of procedure required
by law” because it is a substantive policy or series of policies that affect legal rights that require
notice and comment, and yet they never engaged in any notice-and-comment process, or other
process to obtain input from the public, before engaging in these unlawful agency policies. 5
U.S.C. § 706(2)(D).
377. The Census Defendants’ conduct is unlawful under the APA and should be set
aside.
Plaintiffs respectfully request that the Court enter judgment in their favor and grant the
following relief:
A. Declare that Defendants’ conduct violates the First Amendment of the U.S.
Constitution and analogous provisions of Missouri’s, Louisiana’s, and other States’ Constitutions;
B. Declare that Defendants’ conduct is ultra vires and exceeds their statutory
authority;
C. Declare that Defendants’ conduct violates the Administrative Procedure Act and is
servants, employees, attorneys, and all persons acting in concert or participation with them, from
servants, employees, attorneys, and all persons acting in concert or participation with them, from
taking any steps to demand, urge, pressure, or otherwise induce any social-media platform to
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censor, suppress, de-platform, suspend, shadow-ban, de-boost, restrict access to content, or take
any other adverse action against any speaker, content or viewpoint expressed on social media; and
F. Grant such other and further relief as the Court may deem just and proper.
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CERTIFICATE OF SERVICE
I hereby certify that, on August 2, 2022, I caused a true and correct copy of the foregoing
to be filed by the Court’s electronic filing system, to be served by operation of the Court’s
electronic filing system on counsel for all parties who have entered in the case.
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