For the time being…
RF Kennedy has been having a hard time trying to sue the US government for breaching the 1st amendment, even though they were found to be pressurizing social media into censoring him. Under the First Amendment the govt can’t censor the people.
Private companies can, but if the government orders them to, then it’s a breach of the constitution because they are doing the censoring.
But another case ( Murthy v. Missouri), with many appellants, stalled on the legal greasy floor known as ‘standing’. Most of the appellants were ruled not to have sufficient ‘standing’ to sue ie not sufficiently/directly affected by the censorship. Which seems ludicrous as the outcome of censorship is loss of free speech, which the FA is supposed to protect. And whatever follows from that. The implications for this covid information were not exactly trivial.
And this was the Supreme Court. A 2-1 decision, where the opinion of the dissenting judge nevertheless gave hope that the arguments might influence the Lousiana case.
This case raised - and raises - the question can anyone ever sue the FDA, who can presumably prevent social media from reporting anything.
Hopes were higher in RFK’s (Lousiana) case however, as it had emerged that unlike most of the appellants in the other case, he was named as somebody who was essentially singled out to be censored. This gave him standing as being directly restricted and affected; he also had standing as a presidential candidate.
This just means his case will be heard after all. It’s vital to RFK, but it’s unclear what rights it might confer on the public, even if RFK wins. There would be some bad publicity for the Biden government to ride out. No doubt they’ll succeed in delaying it past November.