Meta Beats Censorship Case From RFK Jr.'s Anti-Vaccine Group (2)

Meta Platforms Inc. didn’t violate the First Amendment rights of the Robert F. Kennedy Jr.-founded Children’s Health Defense by removing the group’s anti-vaccine Facebook posts, a federal appeals court ruled Friday.

In a divided decision, the San Francisco-based US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit said that Meta as a private business can censor posts on its platform, and only in “exceptional circumstances” can it be treated as a state actor subject to constitutional restrictions.

The CHD failed to adequately allege that Meta’s content moderation policies for vaccine misinformation were based on an agreement between the platform and the ...