A federal appeals court said Monday that YouTube failed to prove it was a “state actor” when it removed a video by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. that allegedly contained misinformation about vaccines.
The U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a lower court’s decision denying Kennedy’s request for a preliminary injunction requiring Google LLC to restore the YouTube video.
A three-judge panel of the appeals court said Kennedy had failed to prove that YouTube removed at least two of the videos at the government’s behest.
“Mr. Kennedy does not dispute Google’s assertion that it exercised its own editorial judgment in removing his videos,” the four-page opinion states. “Furthermore, Mr. Kennedy has not identified any specific communications from federal officials to Google regarding Mr. Kennedy’s removed videos, or any threatening or coercive communications.”
Kennedy filed a First Amendment lawsuit against Google last year in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California after the company removed his videos for ignoring its medical and vaccine misinformation policies.
The 9th Circuit’s decision is the latest in a series of losses for Kennedy, who has sued a number of tech companies and governments over censorship by social media platforms. Earlier this month, the 9th Circuit ruled that Meta Platforms did not violate the First Amendment rights of Children’s Health Defense, an anti-vaccination group that Kennedy supports, when Facebook removed the group’s posts.
Kennedy, who had sought the Democratic nomination for president in 2024 before running as an independent, suspended his campaign last week to endorse Republican candidate Donald Trump.
JW Howard Attorneys Ltd. is representing Kennedy. Munger Tolles & Olson LLP is representing Google.
The case is Kennedy v. Google LLC, 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, No. 23-3411, August 26, 2024.