• by Wendy Davis  @wendyndavis, August 26, 2024

Siding with YouTube, a federal appellate court has rejected vaccine critic and former presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.'s request to force the company to restore clips that violated its policies against medical misinformation.

In a ruling issued Monday, a three-judge panel of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals essentially said Kennedy failed to show that YouTube infringed his First Amendment rights by removing the videos -- including clips of him being interviewed by podcast hosts Jordan Peterson and Joe Rogan. The ruling upholds a decision issued last year by U.S. District Court Judge Trina Thompson in the Northern District of California.

The battle dates to last August, when Kennedy sought a court order requiring YouTube to host videos in which he made controversial statements about vaccinations.

Thompson rejected the request, ruling that Kennedy was unlikely to prevail on his claim that Google violated the First Amendment, given that Google is a private company.

In general, the First Amendment prohibits the government from censoring speech, but doesn't prevent private companies from suppressing content -- unless those companies are considered “state actors,” meaning agents of the government.

Kennedy appealed Thompson's ruling to the 9th Circuit, where he claimed Google was a state actor when it took down his clips. Kennedy specifically contended that Google's medical misinformation policy allegedly relied on “government sources,” such as the World Health Organization and local health authorities.

On Monday, the appellate judges rejected that argument, writing that Kennedy didn't identify “any specific communications from a federal official to Google concerning the removed Kennedy videos,” or “any threatening or coercive communication, veiled or otherwise, from a federal official to Google concerning Kennedy.”

“As Kennedy has not shown that Google acted as a state actor in removing his videos, his invocation of First Amendment rights is misplaced,” Circuit Judges Consuelo María Callahan, Gabriel Sanchez and District Court Judge John A. Kronstadt wrote in an unsigned opinion.