RFK Jr. Files for Temporary Restraining Order vs. Google in 1st Amendment Case

Democratic presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. filed an application (docket 5:23-cv-03880) for a temporary restraining order against Google Wednesday to stop YouTube from using its “’medical misinformation’ policies” to remove videos of Kennedy’s speech "on matters of public concern” during the 2024 presidential campaign. Kennedy filed a First Amendment lawsuit against Google and YouTube (see 2308030049) in U.S. District Court for Northern California in San Francisco last week involving Google's COVID-19 vaccine misinformation policy.

The court should give Kennedy the chance to conduct limited discovery in the case for “good cause,” he said, citing American LegalNet, Inc. v. Davis. Discovery would be targeted to communications between Google executives and executive branch officials about vaccine misinformation policy, alleged misinformation spread by Kennedy, the removal of Kennedy videos from YouTube and his March speech at Saint Anselm College’s New Hampshire Institute of Politics (NHIOP).

Kennedy spoke at the college about “the corrupt merger of corporate and state power," which led him to question "the increasing number of vaccines American children are required to take,” said the application. Manchester Public Television posted a video of the speech on YouTube, and Google removed it for violating its policies on COVID-19 vaccine misinformation, it said.

Kennedy complained about the action, saying his vaccine comments were only part of the NHIOP speech, which also covered environmental issues, said the filing. “Google refused to change its position,” said the application, quoting Google as saying: “While we do allow content with educational, documentary, scientific or artistic context, such as news reports, the content we removed from this channel was raw footage and did not provide sufficient context.”

Google also removed videos of Kennedy since he announced his candidacy April 19, including two in August, for “vaccine misinformation policy,” said the application. “Unlike Facebook and Twitter, Google has continued to use its misinformation policies (primarily the vaccine policy) to remove Kennedy’s political speech from YouTube,” it said.

Google “will continue to do so throughout the 2024 campaign,” said Kennedy. The platform also hasn’t allowed Kennedy to control the biographical information it displays for him “in response to user searches, something it gives to other political candidates,” said the filing.

A Google spokesperson emailed Thursday: “YouTube applies its Community Guidelines independently, transparently, and consistently, regardless of political viewpoint. These claims are meritless and we look forward to refuting them.”

The video removals had a “huge impact,” said the candidate, saying YouTube users consumed about 110 million hours of election-related content on the platform from April 2015 to March 2016. He quoted a Google executive saying then that voter decisions “used to be made in living rooms, in front of televisions,” but today they’re made in “micro-moments, on mobile devices.”

Kennedy cited the other freedom of speech case he's part of against his Democratic rival, Missouri v. Biden (see story, this issue), in which U.S. District Judge Terry Doughty, a Donald Trump appointee, issued a decision enjoining federal government officials from coercing tech companies to censor the government’s critics (see related story, this issue). “The injunction does not bind the technology companies themselves, though, and thus does not prohibit Google from continuing to censor" Kennedy based on the "misinformation policies it developed with the government,” said the filing.

Discovery “could be done quickly and would shed even more light on the public-private partnership that has been used to censor Kennedy during the past two years and that, if not stopped, will be used in an unprecedented manner to prevent Americans from hearing what a viable presidential candidate says about matters of public concern,” said the filing.