• by Wendy Davis , October 21, 2024

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.'s Children's Health Defense, known for criticizing vaccines, is preparing to ask the Supreme Court to revive a lawsuit accusing Meta Platforms of wrongly suppressing the group's posts.

The organization revealed its plans last week, when it quietly petitioned Justice Elena Kagan to extend the deadline for seeking Supreme Court review from November 7, 2024 to January 6, 2025.

The group's move comes in a battle dating to August 2020, when Children's Health Defense alleged that Meta's Facebook deactivated a fund-raising tool Children's Health Defense used on the platform, and also prevented the group's ad agency from purchasing online ads. Facebook also allegedly labeled some Children's Health Defense posts as false, and demoted or banned content that the group posted to its page on the platform.

The group claimed those moves by Meta violated the First Amendment, arguing that the tech company was a “state actor” -- meaning equivalent to the government -- when it allegedly rejected ads and suppressed posts.

Children's Health Defense specifically contended that Meta and the government worked together to censor speech, and that Meta allegedly changed its vaccine-related policies due to “coercion” by lawmakers. Among other evidence of alleged coercion, the organization pointed to a letter sent by Schiff to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg in February 2019, blasting the company for enabling the spread of anti-vaccine propaganda on the service. In that letter, Schiff accused Facebook and Instagram of “surfacing and recommending messages that discourage parents from vaccinating their children.”

U.S. District Court Judge Susan Illston in the Northern District of California dismissed the lawsuit in 2021. Children's Health Defense then appealed to the 9th Circuit, which in August uphold Illston's ruling.

“Meta has a First Amendment right to use its platform to promote views it finds congenial and to refrain from promoting views it finds distasteful,” 9th Circuit Court Judge Eric Miller, an appointee of former President Donald Trump, wrote in an opinion joined by U.S. District Court Judge Edward Korman.

Circuit Judge Daniel Collins, also a Trump appointee, dissented, writing that he would have allowed the Children's Health Defense to pursue a request for an injunction against Meta.