The state of Texas, the New Civil Liberties Alliance (NCLA) and two conservative media outlets are suing the State Department for allegedly working to suppress conservative speech online.
The State Department allegedly attempted to censor speech online and funded organizations targeting conservative media outlets, the NCLA, The Federalist and the Daily Wire claimed in their lawsuit Wednesday. (RELATED: FBI Agent Who Won’t Testify Before Jim Jordan Had ‘Mandate’ To Pressure Platforms Into Censorship, House Report Finds)
The lawsuit seeks to “halt one of the most egregious government operations to censor the American press in the history of the nation,” the complaint, filed Tuesday, said. (RELATED: Government Censors Linked Hunter Biden Laptop Story To Apparent ‘Web Of Falsehoods’ About Joe Biden, Lawsuit Reveals)
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The State Department’s Global Engagement Center (GEC) funded the Global Disinformation Index (GDI), a third party group reportedly behind a “dynamic exclusion list” of “disinformation” spreaders online featuring conservative news outlets such as the Washington Examiner and New York Post.
The GEC worked with the Election Integrity Partnership (EIP), another third party organization, to censor speech ahead of the 2020 presidential election, according to a report released in November by the House Judiciary Committee.
NCLA’s complaint argues the GEC violated the First Amendment and acted outside of its statutory authority in its alleged effort to suppress conservative news outlets.
“Defendants have been granted no statutory authority to fund or promote censorship technology or censorship enterprises that target the American press,” the complaint asserted.
“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,” the complaint added.
Other government agencies, such as the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency within the Department of Homeland Security, similarly coordinated with the EIP to pressure social media companies into censoring speech online during the 2020 presidential election cycle, the Judiciary Committee report detailed.
“George Orwell, call your office: The Disinformation Governance Board is back! Worse, it was here all along quietly operating out of the State Department through three presidential administrations with the admitted intent of cutting off advertising dollars and viewership from conservative media outlets,” NCLA senior litigation counsel Peggy Little said in a press release.
“Your State Department — which may only address foreign affairs — has been secretly scheming with and funding private companies to create blacklists of conservative media outlets to defund and silence speech with which it disagrees,” Little added.