Supreme Court Asked to Review California’s Retaliation against Judicial Watch Over YouTube Election Integrity Video

(Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch announced today that it filed a petition for a writ of certiorari in the United States Supreme Court concerning a Judicial Watch lawsuit asserting that the California Secretary of State retaliated against Judicial Watch because of an accurate election integrity video posted to YouTube just before the 2020 Election (Judicial Watch, Inc. v. Shirley Weber, in her official capacity as Secretary of State of the State of California (No. 2:22-cv-06894)). The California Secretary of State used its well-established working relationship with Big Tech to have YouTube remove and censor Judicial Watch’s video.

Judicial Watch filed the lawsuit in September 2022.

On September 22, 2020, Judicial Watch posted on its YouTube channel a video titled “**ELECTION INTEGRITY CRISIS** Dirty Voter Rolls, Ballot Harvesting & Mail-in-Voting Risks!” The 26-minute video featured Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton discussing the vote-by-mail processes, changes to states’ election procedures, ballot collection (sometimes referred to as “ballot harvesting”), and states’ failures to clean up their voter rolls, among other topics.

Fitton’s comments were informed by successful lawsuits brought by Judicial Watch against Los Angeles County and Weber in 2017 to compel the county and State to comply with the National Voter Registration Act’s (NVRA) voter list maintenance requirements. For instance, in June 2019, Judicial Watch was informed that Los Angeles County had sent notices to 1.6 million inactive voters on its voter rolls after a settlement agreement had been reached.

Judicial Watch uncovered that the California Secretary of State monitored Judicial Watch’s videos for months leading up to the 2020 election with the help of a public relations firm closely connected to the Biden presidential campaign.

Contrary to 11 other appellate circuit courts in the country, the Ninth Circuit has made it more difficult for citizens and groups trying to hold government agencies responsible for retaliating against those citizens or groups for First Amendment-protected speech:

Until this case, every regional circuit had held that an adverse action in the First Amendment retaliation context is one that would chill a person of ordinary firmness from continuing to engage in protected activity. The Ninth Circuit strayed from its sister circuits, excising the “chilling effect” inquiry from the universally accepted standard. It ruled that the Secretary’s course of action was not adverse, and therefore not actionable, without defining “adverse action” or analyzing whether her course of action would chill a person of ordinary firmness.

“The Supreme Court should not give a green light to California or any other government to retaliate against Americans for exercising their free speech rights,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. “Simply put, California’s retaliation against us led to YouTube removing and censoring our accurate election integrity video just before a presidential election.”

Through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) and other direct litigation, Judicial Watch continues to investigate and litigate the broad range of censorship that had been imposed upon tens millions of Americans.

In November 2024, Judicial Watch uncovered records from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) revealing an extensive effort by government and non-government entities to monitor and censor social media posts on fraud during the 2020 election.

In August 2023, Judicial Watch filed two FOIA lawsuits against the U.S. Department of Justice and other federal agencies for communications between the agencies and Facebook and Twitter regarding the government’s involvement in content moderation and censorship on the social media platforms.

In June 2023, Judicial Watch sued DHS for all records of communications tied to the Election Integrity Partnership. Based on representations from the EIP (see here and here), the federal government, social media companies, the EIP, the Center for Internet Security (a non-profit organization funded partly by DHS and the Defense Department) and numerous other leftist groups communicated privately via the Jira software platform developed by Atlassian. 

In February 2023, Judicial Watch sued the U.S. Department Homeland Security (DHS) for records showing cooperation between the Cybersecurity and Information Security Agency (CISA) and social media platforms to censor and suppress free speech. 

Judicial Watch in January 2023 sued the DOJ for records of communications between the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and social media sites regarding foreign influence in elections, as well as the Hunter Biden laptop story. 

###

The post Supreme Court Asked to Review California’s Retaliation against Judicial Watch Over YouTube Election Integrity Video appeared first on Judicial Watch.

Source: https://www.judicialwatch.org/youtube-election-integrity-video/