In Kennedy v. Google, decided yesterday by Judge Trina Thompson (N.D. Cal.), plaintiff sued Google and YouTube claiming that they violated his First Amendment rights by removing videos in which he speaks about vaccines, and seeking a temporary restraining order:
On March 3, 2023, Kennedy spoke at Saint Anselm College's New Hampshire Institute of Politics. The speech centered around Kennedy's concerns about the merger of corporate and state power as related to the number of vaccines children take. He also spoke about his environmental and legal work fighting corporate polluters. On or about the same day, Manchester Public Television posted a video of the speech and YouTube removed it…. Plaintiff alleges that YouTube [also] removed … [the video] "RFK on Joe Rogan – Pfizer COVID Vaccine Trial." …
The court rejected Kennedy's First Amendment claim against Google, reasoning (correctly and unremarkably, I think) that Google isn't the government and thus isn't bound by the First Amendment, and any government interaction with Google urging it to remove certain speech about vaccines wasn't enough to make Google into a government actor.
