Supreme Court to hear oral arguments re injunction in Murthy v Missouri: the most important free speech case ever. RALLY outside the court @ 9 am Monday March 18

Does the government have the right to can the First Amendment or not? YOU are paying for a multi-billion enterprise to censor YOU

The U.S. Supreme Court next week will hear arguments in a case that will determine what you can say and read online.

Will it be your choice? Or will a government bureaucrat decide for you?

On Monday, March 18, the Supreme Court will hear from attorneys arguing on behalf of the states of Missouri and Louisiana and the individual plaintiffs in a case that will have a huge impact on CHD’s own closely related legal effort — Kennedy v. Biden — to shut down government censorship.

The respondents in the case coming before the Supreme Court already won a lower court injunction against the Biden administration based on evidence that key administration officials knowingly broke the law when they pressured social media companies to censor content that contradicted the government’s narrative.

As CHD stated in our “friend-of-the-court brief” submitted to the Supreme Court:

“There may be no individual in the country more heavily targeted for social media censorship by the federal government than Mr. Kennedy” — CHD’s founder and chairman on leave.

It’s no exaggeration to say that how the Supreme Court rules in this case will determine the fate of freedom of speech in America.

The government has been engaged for years in a brave new world where it censors dissent and dissenters by proxy, controlling what hundreds of millions of Americans say, see, and hear every day.

A federal judge said this case “arguably involves the most massive attack against free speech in United States’ history.”

Government bureaucrats decided that you should know only two facts about COVID: that the vaccines alone will “save” you . . . and that they are “safe and effective.”

The FDA and CDC didn’t want you to know about alternative treatments for COVID.

Officials at the White House, CDC, FDA, CISA and more, directly pressured Facebook, Twitter and other social media giants to censor information — even information they knew to be true — if it contradicted government orthodoxy!

The NIH and Fauci didn’t want you to know that “official” hospital protocols were killing people . . . or that their “safe and effective” vaccines were — and still are — causing a record number of vaccine-related deaths and injuries.

When I dedicated my career to fighting for informed consent and medical freedom, it never occurred to me that I, or CHD, would have to sue the U.S. government to protect our First Amendment right to free speech.

But here we are. In the fight of our lives. And we need your help.

Because if the government is allowed to censor scientists, doctors and citizens like you and me to promote its “health” agenda, informed consent will be impossible. Medical freedom will be impossible.

Democracy will die.

This case isn’t just about censorship and free speech. It’s also about power. And autonomy.

It’s about your right to make your own decisions about health and the health of your children — based on all the facts — not just the propaganda spoon-fed to the masses by Big Government joined with Big Tech.

Here is what CHD President Mary Holland said in The Defender today:

I will be at the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday, March 18, to hear the oral arguments in Murthy v. Missouri (formerly Missouri v. Biden) and to rally with others on the front steps in support of our First Amendment rights.

As my colleagues and I wrote in Children’s Health Defense’s (CHD) friend-of-the-court brief, “the fate of the freedom of speech in America may actually depend on this case.”

As we outlined, two recent intertwined developments have led to this shocking reality: (1) the rise of the behemoth social media platforms, eclipsing legacy media as people’s go-to source of news; and (2) the concerted, secret, comprehensive effort of the federal government to censor protected speech, including “wholly accurate information and core political opinion critical of Administration policy.”

As Judge Terry A. Doughty concluded in a lower court ruling, this “arguably involves the most massive attack against free speech in United States’ history” — an attack in which the government censors dissent and dissenters by proxy, controlling what hundreds of millions of Americans and others around the world hear, see and say every day.

Fortunately, the lower courts concluded that the law is on the petitioners’ side — the government cannot do by proxy what the Constitution forbids it to do.

Guided by Norwood v. Harrison, which the Supreme Court decided in 1973, it is “axiomatic that [the] state may not induce, encourage or promote private persons to accomplish what it is constitutionally forbidden to accomplish.”

As we wrote in our brief, “the Norwood axiom is indispensable to the preservation of every constitutional right.” A law enforcement officer can’t ask a passerby to perform an otherwise illegal stop-and-frisk action or search of a home. The government may not outsource illegal conduct.

The U.S. District Court for the Western District of Louisiana granted a preliminary injunction against the Biden administration to cease and desist its interventions to censor social media, and the 5th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals upheld it.

This is a high bar: A preliminary injunction, before a full trial, is granted only when the plaintiffs have proven that they are likely to win at trial and that the continued activity may cause irreparable harm.

Although the lower courts granted the preliminary injunction to stop the Biden administration from censoring, the Supreme Court granted the administration a “stay” or a pause in enforcement pending the outcome of its own review.

Despite the majority’s decision to hear this case, resulting in the March 18 oral arguments, three justices — Samuel A. Alito Jr., Clarence Thomas and Neil M. Gorsuch — dissented from that decision and wrote that the government’s application should be denied because a stay is an extraordinary remedy and because “the Government’s attempts to demonstrate irreparable harm do not come close to clearing this high bar.”

The justices concluded that the stay of the injunction allowed “the defendants to persist in committing the type of First Amendment violations that the lower courts identified.”

Justice Alito concluded, “At this time in the history of our country, what the Court has done, I fear, will be seen by some as giving the Government a green light to use heavy-handed tactics to skew the presentation of views on the medium that increasingly dominates the dissemination of news.”

Justice Alito again voiced concerns when CHD tried to have the Kennedy v. Biden plaintiffs join the Missouri v. Biden plaintiffs at the Supreme Court as these two cases are closely related and consolidated in the District Court of Western Louisiana.

While the Supreme Court declined to allow the Kennedy plaintiffs to intervene, Justice Alito weighed what was at stake: that a candidate running for president of the United States might be actively censored by the rival incumbent candidate, undermining the core principle of democracy that elections are the people’s choice, not the government’s.

I look forward to being at the Supreme Court on Monday to celebrate our Constitution and to rally for free speech. The stakes could scarcely be higher.