The Biden administration is seeking to remove Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s anti-vaccine statements from social media after a major win in the Supreme Court.
In February, Kennedy—who is running as an independent against President Joe Biden in the 2024 presidential election—obtained an injunction in Louisiana preventing the Biden administration and social media companies from removing his statements opposing COVID-19 vaccines.
The Louisiana case, Kennedy v. Biden, is supported by conservative groups and several Republican states, which argued that the federal government should not control freedom of expression.
On June 26, the Supreme Court ruled in a separate case, Murthy v. Missouri, that states and individual plaintiffs don't have standing to sue administration officials over social media platforms' COVID-19 rules.
The Biden administration is now taking the victory in Murthy and applying it to the Kennedy case in Louisiana, which the administration says is almost identical in facts and circumstances.
In a court filing in Louisiana on Monday, lawyers for the U.S. attorney general and the Department of Justice sought an "indicative ruling dissolving the preliminary injunction" taken by Kennedy or a stay on the injunction pending an appeal.
In an indicative ruling, a court indicates how it will rule in certain circumstances—in this case, if a higher court agrees that the injunction should be lifted.
Newsweek contacted Robert Kennedy Jr. and the Department of Justice for comment by email.
Lawyers for the government argued in their brief that Kennedy has no standing to take the case, nor do states that support his position.
"The Supreme Court's conclusion that the plaintiffs in Murthy v. Missouri ... failed to establish ... standing applies equally to the Kennedy Plaintiffs," they wrote in their legal brief.
They also argued that Kennedy was unlikely to win his case, in which he said the federal government was forcing social media companies to remove statements opposing COVID-19 vaccines.
"The Kennedy Plaintiffs are unlikely to be able to demonstrate on the merits that the government coerced the platforms to act given the difficulties identified by the Supreme Court in even establishing that the government's actions influenced the platforms," the government's lawyers wrote.
The lawyers also said that even if the Louisiana court agreed in part with Kennedy's legal arguments, the injunction should still be lifted because it is too broad.
They wrote: "At a minimum, the injunction here is substantially overbroad in light of the Supreme Court's Missouri decision—it covers defendants who had nothing to do with the COVID-19-related posts that are the subject of the Kennedy Plaintiffs' complaint, and it applies universally, to all posts, by anyone, on any platform, on any subject.
"So even if this Court believes that some of the Kennedy Plaintiffs might still have standing notwithstanding Missouri, dissolution of the injunction is prudent so that this Court can reevaluate the situation with the benefit of additional briefing."
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Sean O'Driscoll is a Newsweek Senior Crime and Courts Reporter based in Ireland. His focus is reporting on U.S. law. ... Read more
