Supreme Court rejects censorship case from RFK Jr.’s anti-vaccine group
WASHINGTON – The Supreme Court on June 30 declined to to hear a censorship complaint brought by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s former group against the owner of Facebook.
Children’s Health Defense, an anti-vaccine group founded by Kennedy before he joined President Donald Trump’s administration, argues its First Amendment rights were violated when Facebook restricted the group’s anti-vaccine posts.
Lower courts said Kennedy’s group hadn’t shown that Facebook’s parent company – Meta – was restricting the posts at the direction of the Biden administration. So they concluded Meta can’t be sued as a private business for restricting free speech.
As part of its “Vaccinate with Confidence” initiative, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention worked with social media companies “to promote trustworthy vaccine information.”
But the California-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals concluded that the evidence showed Meta and the government were often at odds.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, testifies at a House committee hearing on Capitol Hill on May 15, 2025.
Still, one of the three appeals judges who considered the case said Meta should be subject to First Amendment challenges because it’s “effectively exercising a distinctive government-conferred power over others’ speech when it decides whether and how to censor third-party speech on its vast platforms.”
Lawyers for Children’s Health Defense said the fact that Kennedy now heads “the very agency that spearheaded censorship of him” doesn’t change the importance of the case. It remains to be seen, they told the Supreme Court, whether Kennedy can disentwine the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s five-year partnership with Meta.
More: Supreme Court says Biden admin can combat social media misinformation in free speech case
In 2024, the Supreme Court ruled that Louisiana, Missouri and others did not have the legal right to sue the Biden administration over complaints that social media platforms censored conservative viewpoints.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Supreme Court rejects censorship case from RFK Jr.’s anti-vaccine group