Supreme Court denies review of case by group founded by RFK Jr. against Poynter, Meta

The U.S. Supreme Court denied review of a lawsuit filed against Meta and the Poynter Institute, PolitiFact’s parent organization, by Children’s Health Defense, a legal advocacy group founded by Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

The court in its June 30 order list did not provide a reason for not taking up the case, which is common. 

Kennedy, who is now President Donald Trump’s Health and Human Services secretary, founded Children’s Health Defense and is the former chairman of the board. 

Children’s Health Defense in 2020 filed a lawsuit against Meta Platforms, which owns Facebook and Instagram, and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg; the Poynter Institute for Media Studies, PolitiFact’s owner and publisher; and Science Feedback, another fact-checking website. Among other claims, Children’s Health Defense accused PolitiFact of wrongly determining another website’s claim that the flu vaccine was “significantly associated” with an increased risk of coronavirus false. 

“At no point did any court find any of CHD’s legal attacks on Poynter’s fact-checking journalism meritorious,” Mark R. Caramanica, the lawyer who represented Poynter, said in an email. “We welcome today’s Supreme Court order finally putting this litigation odyssey to bed.”

The lawsuit alleged that PolitiFact interfered with Children’s Health Defense’s display of an article on its Facebook page, and more generally that PolitiFact collaborated with Facebook and government and international entities — including the World Health Organization, the White House and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — “to suppress vaccine safety speech with a ‘warning label’ and other similar types of notices which, while purporting to flag misinformation, in reality censor valid and truthful speech, including content posted by (Children’s Health Defense) on its Facebook page regarding vaccines.”

In 2021, a district court dismissed Children’s Health Defense’s complaint. In 2024, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in California affirmed that ruling.

“I’m happy this is over, thankful our court system can see a paper tiger of a lawsuit for what it is, and sorry so much time, thought and money was spent for nothing,” said Aaron Sharockman, PolitiFact executive director and Poynter vice president for sales and strategic partnerships. “We created PolitiFact to help people have access to accurate, high-quality information, not to censor speech, and certainly not to collude with big tech or the federal government.”

Until April, PolitiFact was an independent member of Meta’s Third-Party Fact-Checking Program. Meta contracted with fact-checking organizations such as PolitiFact to fact-check false content on Meta’s platforms. In January, Zuckerberg announced he was ending the program in the U.S.

Children’s Health Defense CEO Mary Holland said in a statement that her organization is “deeply disappointed” that the Supreme Court declined to hear the case.