Three COVID-19 skeptics who have been censored on Twitter have filed a lawsuit against the Biden administration to block its request for information about their social media accounts.
A motion for a preliminary injunction, filed Wednesday in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Ohio, argues that Surgeon General Vivek Murthy and Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra lack legal authority for their request that technology platforms give them “information about sources of Covid-19 misinformation” by May 2.
The motion claims that the March 3 request came as “the culmination of a nearly year-long public campaign wherein, inter alia, President Joseph Biden, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki, and Surgeon General Vivek Murthy made countless threatening statements” against social media platforms that fail to censor “anything that diverges from Government-approved messaging on COVID-19.”
Twitter suspended plaintiff Daniel Kotzin on March 7 and banned plaintiff Michael Senger permanently on March 8, according to court documents. It suspended Mark Changizi in April, June and December last year.
“The timing of these events, along with the one-sided nature of the censorship, establishes that Twitter suspended Plaintiffs because it feared reprisal from the Government,” the motion states.
The New Civil Liberties Alliance, a nonpartisan public-interest law firm, filed the original complaint seeking declaratory and injunctive relief last Thursday.
The Department of Health and Human Services did not respond immediately on Wednesday to a request for comment.
For more information, visit The Washington Times COVID-19 resource page.
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