A lawsuit spearheaded by the Louisiana and Missouri attorneys general’s offices that alleges a “massive, sprawling” campaign of collusion between the federal government and social media companies has expanded to include 47 defendants.
The new amended complaint filed Oct. 6 in the Western District of Louisiana includes new defendants such as White House officials Andy Slavitt and Rob Flaherty, White House counsel Dana Remus and several FBI officials who oversee cybersecurity.
“During the course of discovery in our lawsuit, we uncovered disturbing amounts of collusion between big tech and the federal government,” Cory Dennis, Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry’s press secretary, told the Louisiana Record in an email. “Thus, the addition of 47 new defendants. … Jeff Landry will continue to uphold the rule of law – especially in cases like this, where we believe the federal government censored information and violated the First Amendment rights of Americans.”
The main argument in the federal lawsuit is that scores of federal officials, among multiple federal agencies, have aggressively pushed to squash viewpoints they disagree with, including the views of plaintiff Jayanta Bhattacharya, a professor of health policy at Stanford University, who says that his COVID-19 opinions and those of his social-media audience have been routinely suppressed.
The plaintiff states will request that the federal court allow state officials to take depositions from a number of the key defendants, according to Landry’s office.
“"Throughout this case, we have uncovered a disturbing amount of collusion between big tech and big government," Landry said in a prepared statement. "This egregious attack on our First Amendment will be met with an equally full-hearted defense of the rights of the American people."
The amended complaint alleges that communications between the FBI’s Foreign Influence Task Force and Meta resulted in Facebook’s suppression of the Hunter Biden laptop story.
“This case involves a massive, sprawling federal ‘Censorship Enterprise,’ which includes dozens of federal officials across at least 11 federal agencies and components, who communicate with social-media platforms about misinformation, disinformation and the suppression of private speech on social media. …”