RFK Jr. Makes Last Pitch to Intervene in SCOTUS Review of Social Media Injunction

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and his co-plaintiffs in Kennedy v. Biden made likely their last pitch Monday in support of their motion to intervene in the U.S. Supreme Court review of Missouri v. Biden and its social media injunction against officials from the White House and four federal agencies before the justices consider the motion’s fate at their Friday conference (see 2311010038). The facts of the case in Missouri v. Biden establish that the federal government “has specifically and successfully sought to censor” one of the incumbent president’s “leading electoral rivals,” said the Kennedy plaintiffs’ reply brief (docket 23-411) in reference to RFK Jr., who is running for the presidency as an independent.The aim is “to prevent that rival candidate from giving voice in the modern public square to information and ideas” critical of Biden administration policy, it said. “The threat to a fair presidential election is apparent,” it said. The “rival candidate in question,” RFK Jr., “is already a party to these proceedings by consolidation” in the U.S. District Court for Western Louisiana, it said. His First Amendment rights “will be adjudicated” by the Supreme Court, “yet he is not represented here,” it said. “No existing party” to Missouri v. Biden “stands on the same footing” as RFK Jr., it said. He’s “not only a leading presidential candidate but one of the leading targets” of the government’s "censorship campaign," it said. The Kennedy plaintiffs said they submitted their brief in reply to the opposition to the motion to intervene filed Nov. 6 by the Republican attorneys general and their five individual co-plaintiffs in Missouri v. Biden, who argued that the motion is untimely and fails to meet the rare and extraordinary burden that SCOTUS has established for intervention after it has granted cert (see 2311070005). “It bears emphasis,” said the Kennedy plaintiffs’ reply brief, that the government defendants in Missouri v. Biden “have not filed an opposition to the motion to intervene.” But the government did file its opposition to RFK Jr.’s motion Nov. 2 (see 2311030001), and the Missouri respondents cited many of the same arguments as the government did in urging SCOTUS to deny Kennedy as an intervenor in the case.