By The Defender Staff

Children’s Health Defense (CHD) and the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) finalized a settlement in CHD’s landmark class action censorship lawsuit against key Biden administration officials accused of colluding with tech companies to censor social media content.

In a press release, the DOJ cited President Donald Trump’s Jan. 20, 2025, Executive Order “acknowledging that ‘the previous administration trampled free speech rights by censoring Americans’ speech on online platforms, often by exerting substantial coercive pressure on third parties, such as social media companies, to moderate, deplatform, or otherwise suppress speech that the Federal Government did not approve.’ 90 Fed. Reg. 8243 (Jan. 28, 2025).”

CHD, along with its then-Chairman Robert F. Kennedy Jr., sued the Biden administration in March 2023.

The lawsuit, Kennedy v. Biden, became CHD v. Trump after Trump became president of the U.S., and Kennedy, who first left CHD to run his own presidential campaign, was later named secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services under the Trump administration.

The class action lawsuit against then-President Joe Biden, Dr. Anthony Fauci and other top administration officials and federal agencies alleged they “waged a systematic, concerted campaign” to compel the nation’s three largest social media companies to censor constitutionally protected speech.

Jed Rubenfeld, attorney for CHD, called the settlement a “tremendous win” against government censorship.

“We brought this case years ago to challenge the Biden administration’s assault on free speech,” Rubenfeld said. “Today, the government, under a new administration, acknowledged that assault. And via a previously issued Executive Order, the president prohibited government officials from pressuring social media companies in the future to trample on Americans’ First Amendment rights.”

As part of the settlement with CHD, the government agreed to pay attorneys’ fees.

The DOJ also settled a similar lawsuit, Missouri v. Biden, and issued a consent decree in the case.

The consent decree, binding for 10 years, prohibits the “Surgeon General, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA)” from threatening social media companies unless the companies “remove, delete, suppress, or reduce, including through altering their algorithms, posted social-media content containing protected free speech.”

Missouri v. Biden was filed in May 2022. In July 2023, a federal judge consolidated Kennedy v. Biden and Missouri v. Biden — “for all purposes” including discovery.

CEO Mary Holland said government collusion with tech giants to censor Americans’ speech during the COVID-19 pandemic didn’t just result in CHD being deplatformed from major social media — it also shut down scientific debate around COVID-19 vaccines, preventing Americans from being able to make informed decisions based on the full range of risks associated with the vaccines.

Holland, who called censorship a “tool of tyranny, said that once social media companies caved to the government’s pressure to censor CHD and others, the tech giants deployed algorithms that to suppress and censor content, especially content related to COVID-19 and vaccines.

“Unfortunately, those algorithms are still in place, despite President Trump’s Executive Order and the successful settlements in these two landmark lawsuits,” Holland said.

Zuckerberg admitted censoring content under pressure from Biden officials

In November 2020, CHD sued Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, over the social media giant’s censorship practices.

In August 2022, Meta deplatformed CHD from Facebook and Instagram and has not yet reinstated the accounts.

In January 2025, CHD petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court (SCOTUS) to hear its case against Meta. Less than 24 hours later, Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg admitted to censoring content at the government’s request. He also nnounced the company was ending its third-party “fact-checking” program.

Zuckerberg said that in recent years, his company responded to pressure for stricter speech restrictions. “Governments and legacy media have pushed to censor more and more,” Zuckerberg said. “A lot of this is clearly political.”

He acknowledged that some of the “complex systems” Meta built to moderate content made mistakes. “We’ve reached a point where it’s just too many mistakes and too much censorship.”

SCOTUS declined to hear CHD’s case against Meta. The social media giant has not yet restored CHD’s deplatformed Facebook and Instagram accounts.

Google also admitted government pressure to censor COVID content

Google, which owns YouTube, also deplatformed CHD. The tech giant’s search engine continues to censor CHD.

In September 2025, Google admitted to censoring YouTube content that questioned official COVID-19 narratives — and deplatforming users who posted such material — under pressure from the Biden administration.

The admission came as part of an investigation by Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) into Big Tech censorship practices.

King & Spalding, the legal firm representing Alphabet Inc., the parent company of Google and YouTube, acknowledged the censorship in a letter to Jordan.

In the letter, Alphabet said the Biden administration’s pressure to censor users was “unacceptable and wrong,” and offered to reinstate users who were banned for allegedly violating YouTube’s policies on COVID-19 and political speech.

Jordan issued subpoenas to Big Tech executives in February 2023 and March 2025 as part of a broader investigation into the “censorship-industrial complex,” in which the Biden administration allegedly worked with Big Tech companies to “censor Americans,” “true information” and critics of the administration.

Related articles in The Defender

• Judge in Landmark Censorship Case Delivers ‘Spectacular’ Win For Free Speech
• ‘Big Victory’: CHD Lawsuit Alleging Key Biden Officials Colluded With Tech Giants to Censor Free Speech Consolidated With Missouri Censorship Case
• Breaking: RFK Jr. and CHD Sue Biden, Fauci for Alleged Censorship
• We Were Censored By Meta — We’re Taking Them to the Supreme Court
• CHD Files First Amended Complaint in Lawsuit Against Facebook
• Without Warning, Facebook, Instagram De-Platform Children’s Health Defense Accounts

The post Children’s Health Defense Wins Settlement in Landmark Censorship Case appeared first on Children’s Health Defense.

 

IPAK-EDU is grateful to The Defender as this piece was originally published there and is included in this news feed with mutual agreement. Read More