Vaccine skeptic Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is likely to play a larger role in the second Trump administration’s health policy than in holding the outgoing Biden administration accountable for alleged proxy censorship, under a Ruling by the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.

Published the day before the election, the unprecedented opinion went largely unnoticed, but follows the line of the Obstacles created by the Supreme Court to prove legal damage from federal agencies that coerce technology platforms to censor narratives unfavorable to the government.

Kennedy, an independent candidate in the presidential race before suspending his campaign in August, and his Children’s Health Defense do not have legal standing for a preliminary injunction against President Biden, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, the General Surgeon Vivek Murthy and the Department. of Health and Human Services, among other agencies, according to the unsigned opinion of a three-judge panel.

Their case will now return to the district court to decide whether they have standing for “other forms of relief, if any, and if not, to dismiss the suit for lack of standing,” said the judges, nominees for Presidents Reagan, Clinton and George W. Bush, wrote collectively.

The future opportunities for the Democrat-turned-independent-turned-Trump surrogate are so bright that Kennedy he promised NBC News that he will not use his power in the next administration “take away vaccines from anyone”, but rather “make sure that there are scientific studies of safety and effectiveness” so that people can make “individual evaluations” with “the best information.”

He “Make America Healthy Again” Leader has emerged as a future head of the Food and Drug Administration or successor to Xavier Becerra in the HHS secretary, and has even proposed eliminating entire departments of the FDA, singling out its nutrition office as ironically harmful to children.

Another Fifth Circuit panel made up of Reagan, George W. Bush and Trump nominees gave Big Tech a New obstacle Thursday in NetChoice’s challenge to a Texas law require platforms to observe viewpoint neutrality with third-party posts, and refer the case to the district court to answer “fact-intensive questions… in the first instance after exhaustive discovery.”

SCOTUS scolded 5th Circuit this summer for ignoring NetChoice’s argument that HB 20 – the Texas law that prohibits major social media platforms from engaging in discriminatory viewpoint censorship – is inherently unconstitutional, not just in some applications, and for its “serious misunderstanding of First Amendment precedent and principle” by concluding that restricting editorial control does not “interfere with expression” and that Texas has a “valid” interest in changing social media.

Monday’s ruling is limited to Kennedy and CHD, whose case was consolidated by a larger challenge from Missouri, Louisiana, and censured doctors and an activist.

This last group presented its own motion for further discovery to keep case moving under the new SCOTUS parameters the week before the election, arguing that the high court had reviewed a “limited record” that, “to take just one example,” was missing internal Facebook emails that explicitly say it censored content “under pressure from (Biden) administration.”

After Kennedy and CHD filed new pleas alleging that specific feds “specifically targeted them” for past and current censorship, the trial court determined that they had standing and approved a preliminary injunction, which the Fifth Circuit temporarily blocked.

The three-judge panel dismissed the extent to which those statements changed the situation.

CEO Mary Holland said Facebook’s parent company Meta and YouTube banned CHD for three years, Facebook and its sibling Instagram temporarily banned Kennedy before that, and “certain events in 2021” suggest Meta and YouTube “acted at the behest” of the White House, Murthy and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to suppress Kennedy, the villain of the “Disinformation Dozen.”

“However, she does not discuss any post-2021 government action,” the unsigned opinion says, comparing Holland’s statement to evidence from Health Freedom Louisiana co-director Jill Hines, whom SCOTUS considered the only conceivable plaintiff with standing. in Missouri. a case that, however, only showed “past injuries” attributable to the feds.

The panel cited a section of SCOTUS that said platforms’ policies “tainted by initial government coercion” can now be enforced at the platforms’ own volition. The Netherlands has the same “reparation problem,” meaning that a court order would not help the plaintiffs.

Brigid Rasmussen, chief of staff for Kennedy’s presidential campaign before he dropped out and endorsed Trump, actually “did not trace any of the platforms’ content moderation actions against Kennedy back to the government,” the opinion says.

While citing the resumption of cross-platform communications, the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency: revealed by Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Mark WarnerD-Va., this spring – Rasmussen relied on a “speculative chain of possibilities” to claim that the censorship could be attributed to the feds.

This is the same problem Gateway Expert Publisher Jim Hoft was involved in the Missouri-led case, in which he was the only plaintiff alleging election-related censorship, the panel said.

“That chain doesn’t become any less speculative if the FBI claims it will continue to communicate with platforms about election misinformation,” and may be “even further speculative now that he has suspended his presidential campaign,” according to the ruling.

Trump-nominated judge Andrew Oldham, who took office just six months later Texas Republican Governor Greg Abbott named him general counsel, wrote Thursday’s ruling in the Texas neutrality case.

The Fifth Circuit cannot assess whether HB 20’s “unconstitutional applications substantially outweigh constitutional ones,” as required for a facial challenge, because “the record is underdeveloped,” he wrote, citing SCOTUS in NetChoice’s consolidated challenge against Texas and Florida social networks. media laws known as Moody.

“Who is covered…what activities are covered” and “how do covered actors moderate content? And to what extent does requiring each covered actor to explain their content moderation decisions burden their speech?” Oldham asked rhetorically.

NetChoice “strongly opposed (and the district court blocked) the very discovery” required to evaluate the constitutionality of HB 20 in every possible application, under SCOTUS precedent in the consolidated Florida case, and showed chutzpah in telling the Fifth Circuit to ignore SCOTUS and simply evaluate the “core applications” of the law – public news sources.

“He Moody The court was emphatic that plaintiffs cannot succeed on their First Amendment facial claims by focusing on “core requests,” and the district court cannot truncate its assessment “of who and what is covered by the law” at the behest of of plaintiffs,” Oldham wrote.

He mocked NetChoice for claiming HB 20’s “parameters” are “easy to draw,” when SCOTUS said it could apply to “direct messaging or event management” services, Gmail filters, Etsy customer reviews, exchanges financial services from Venmo and ride sharing from Uber. operation.

The lower court needs a “detailed understanding of how each covered actor moderates content on each covered platform,” Oldham wrote, citing SCOTUS that “different levels of editorial choice” and therefore expressiveness may apply to the curation of feeds and direct messages.

You don’t even know what algorithms each platform uses and how they may differ within the platform depending on the service, such as whether X “moderates content differently or whether its algorithms operate differently on “For You” and “Following “. it feeds, he said.

The court must consider “whether each covered actor on each covered platform is engaging in any expressive activity when making content moderation decisions” and then “evaluate the extent to which the requirement to explain that platform’s content moderation decisions,” as it is established by law. requires, “loads the actor’s expression,” Oldham wrote.

Although NetChoice argued that “the precise burdens on specific websites are not material,” the judge said it was “difficult to see how the district court could determine” whether an undue burden is placed on each actor and covered service “without considering, well , those burdens.” ” – and as SCOTUS said, “the variations in those loads between platforms” as well.