The Supreme Court on Monday rejected Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s attempt to intervene in a social media censorship case against the Biden administration.
He filed a motion in October, in the case Murthy v. Missouri, to make arguments before the high court that the Biden administration was imposing its will on social media companies to censor his theories about the COVID-19 vaccinations.
The court declined RFK's bid to join the effort 8-1 and with no explanation. Justice Samuel Alito was the lone dissenter.
The lawsuit is being brought by attorneys general from Missouri and Louisiana.
Kennedy's Instagram account was banned for what the platform said was "sharing debunked claims about the coronavirus vaccines." Kennedy claimed his First Amendment rights were being violated by the federal government because his views ran afoul of the Biden administration's policies and that it conspired with social media platforms to shut him down.
The conjoined cases brought by Missouri and Louisiana AGs make similar arguments that the Biden administration was censoring conservatives' viewpoints about the pandemic.
Alito was the only justice to side with Kennedy, that his motion, although rare, should have been merged with the cases of the red states.
"Our democratic form of government is undermined if government officials prevent a candidate for high office from communicating with voters, and such efforts are especially dangerous when the officials engaging in such conduct are answerable to a rival candidate," Alito wrote. "I would allow him to intervene to ensure that we can reach the merits of respondents' claims and to prevent the irreparable loss of his First Amendment rights."
Further, the Biden administration has been accused of suppressing the viewpoints of a political opponent; Kennedy is making a run at the 2024 presidential election as an independent.
He was attempting to join a case that would be heard by the Supreme Court early next year as opposed to making a run to be heard independently.
"Because Mr. Kennedy's arguments on the merits are essentially the same as respondents', allowing intervention would not significantly affect petitioners' burden with regard to that issue," Alito wrote. "But the denial of intervention is likely to prevent Mr. Kennedy from vindicating the rights he claims until the spring of 2024 and perhaps as late as June of that year. And by that time, several months of the presidential campaign will have passed."
Mark Swanson ✉
Mark Swanson, a Newsmax writer and editor, has nearly three decades of experience covering news, culture and politics.
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