Lawsuit Alleging YouTube Violated Constitution by Taking Down QAnon Videos Dismissed

A lawsuit alleging that YouTube violated the Constitution’s First Amendment by removing videos promoting the QAnon conspiracy theory has been thrown out by a federal judge.U.S. District Judge Beth Freeman dismissed the suit against YouTube parent company Google on Tuesday. The complaint was filed last year by a group of self-described “conservative content creators” who claimed that their rights were violated when YouTube suspended their accounts. The judge found that the plaintiffs failed to prove that Google, as a private company, was acting on behalf of the government—the only entity liable for First Amendment claims.”Based on the inapplicability of any of the four state action tests outlined by the Supreme Court… the Court finds that Plaintiffs have failed to plead a proper First Amendment claim due to their failure to sufficiently allege that Defendants’ conduct constituted state action,” Freeman wrote in her decision.Freeman dismissed the First Amendment claim “with prejudice,” meaning that the plaintiffs cannot not appeal the decision in federal court. She was not convinced by arguments that YouTube was forced to act on behalf of the government by members of Congress who “demanded that the unpopular speech dubbed ‘misinformation,’ and QAnon-related speech be limited and erased.”Lawyers for the…
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