Conservatives File Lawsuit Against Biden Administration for Online Censorship

A new lawsuit headed by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and three others alleges that President Joe Biden’s State Department worked to censor conservative views online.

Paxton’s office joined the nonprofit New Civil Liberties Alliance, as well as the publications The Daily Wire and The Federalist, in the lawsuit filed Wednesday.

The group pointed out that the State Department’s Global Engagement Center funded the Global Disinformation Index, a third-party group that organizes an “exclusion list” of “disinformation” spreaders.

Records unveiled by the House Judiciary Committee also showed that the GEC worked with the Election Integrity Partnership, another third party, to regulate speech ahead of the 2020 election.

Earlier this year, Newsmax CEO Christopher Ruddy called out groups like GDI and EIP — notably NewsGuard — for presenting as independent while disproportionally targeting conservatives.

“All the liberal sites like CNN and New York Times get great scores no matter what they do,” Ruddy said at the 2023 Conservative Political Action Conference.

“Think about what CNN did — all the problems, the scandals, the Cuomos, the Russian collusion — and they’re among the highest-rated by NewsGuard,” he added.

The latest lawsuit makes a similar argument and goes a step further, accusing the GEC of violating the First Amendment and acting outside of its authority in attempting to suppress conservative outlets.

“Defendants have been granted no statutory authority to fund or promote censorship technology or censorship enterprises that target the American press,” the suit reads.

“There is no enumerated general power to censor speech or the press found in the United States Constitution, and the First Amendment expressly forbids it,” it added.

It serves as the latest effort to fight back against supposedly third-party ratings companies that favor the left.

Elon Musk’s X, formerly twitter, issued a warning about NewsGuard late last month.

“NewsGuard is about to publish a ‘report’ on misinformation on X. As a for-profit company, they will only share the data that underpins their purported research if you pay,” X explained.

Musk is also leading a lawsuit against Media Matters for America, a social media watchdog, for allegedly distorting data in an effort to dissuade advertisers from advertising their products on X.