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Los Angeles County Public Health Director Dr. Barbara Ferrer (Photo: Public Domain, Wikipedia)

LADPH Prevails in First Amendment Lawsuit: Judge Has No Idea How Politics Works

‘LA County now has free rein to censor any American who criticizes it’

By Thomas Buckley, December 7, 2023 7:29 pm

In a stunning decision, a Los Angeles County Superior Court judge has sided with the egregious Los Angeles County Department of Health (LADPH) and ruled it did not violate the First Amendment rights of county residents when it shut down it social media public comments and cajoled Twitter into axing an account that questioned the wisdom of the draconian pandemic response.

The decision is even more stunning considering the fact that the county – right before the trial began in October – offered to settle the case for cash, but no acknowledgement of responsibility and/or improper action. The plaintiffs – the Alliance of Los Angeles County Parents – and their attorney, Julie Hamill, refused.

“It was only money and we we’re – and still are – about safeguarding the constitutional rights of everyone in Los Angeles and across the nation,” Hamill said.

The Alliance sued Barbara Ferrer’s LADPH for two reasons:  First, the department shut off the “public comments” sections of its social media sites in July, 2022.  This move was clearly caused by the negative feedback it was receiving regarding a possible re-imposition of a mask mandate, a move even actual (Ferrer’s doctorate is in the public health field, she thinks) county/USC doctors was not justified by the COVID-related traffic they were seeing at their hospital.

Second, after the comments were turned off, Alliance members started a Twitter (now X) page that would re-post tweets from the LADPH and allow the public to comment on them.  That account was shut down by Twitter after the LADPH contacted the company.

Judge William Fahey found, in his tentative ruling, that the department was within its rights to shut off all public comments, even though the Alliance argument was that they were shut off purely to stifle dissent.  There is case law supporting Fahey on this ruling, but there is also precedent stating that, while a government agency can have comments open or closed, it cannot close them to squash a specific viewpoint.

The department was very pleased with the decision, saying “We are grateful that the Court has issued a ruling that indicates it has determined that the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health has the ability to manage its social media pages to provide a safe space for the County’s 10 million residents to receive critical public health-related information. This decision ensures that Public Health’s social media pages will remain a trusted resource that includes data-driven information that the public can rely on to make informed decisions about their health and the health of their families.”

Trusted source may be a bit of a stretch – the department Facebook page featured ads – disguised as “reviews” – for herbal HIV cures.

Also a bit of stretch considering Ferrer herself testified that what is “misinformation” to her may not be “misinformation” to another person.

As to the Twitter issue, Fahey ruled that requests made by Ferrer communications director Brett  Morrow was not in and of itself  “coercive” to the point of being improper, despite the involvement of the office of Congressman Adam Schiff, then chair of the House Intelligence Committee, a committee that is involved in the regulation of Twitter.

“The word choice and tone of these (Morrow) emails (to Twitter) was polite, non- threatening, professional (as Alliance concedes) and deferential. Next, there is nothing in Twitter’s responsive emails to suggest that it felt threatened or coerced. Instead, Twitter’s responses showed that it was dealing with routine and standard requests,” Fahey wrote.

In this the judge’s decision fails to pass the reality test.

Just the name of “Adam Schiff” attached to email sent directly to a Twitter executive would be enough to get the company to treat the LADPH request very differently from just an ordinary person’s.  Schiff had a history of bullying, of making demands of Twitter to remove things he didn’t like, and he had the power – through his position as chair of the committee – to force the issue.

“I’m troubled by the court’s conclusion that a government entity can shut down a public forum for a viewpoint discriminatory purpose,” said Hamill.  “Government doesn’t like what’s being said in a public forum? Just shut it down!”

Hamill said she was very concerned about the lack of a “level playing field” in First Amendment matters.

“It’s hard to prove your case when a multi-billion dollar company’s lawyers threaten to sue you personally if you use any of the documents they produced. It’s hard to argue the facts when the court seals records that should be in the public domain. It’s hard to win when the government and big tech unite behind the same lawyers to strategize against citizens,” said Hamill. “If there is a silver lining it is that we exposed the underbelly of the County’s operations, although we merely scratched the surface. The County never produced a single email between Ferrer and Morrow. Not one. They exist, and under the Public Records Act, we are entitled to see them.”

The case was seen as a miniature Missouri v. Biden, the massive federal COVID-related censorship case the United States Supreme Court is expected to take up in the spring.  The plaintiffs in that case have already  – for the most part – prevailed at the district and appeals court levels, having shown the pervasive and unconstitutional federal efforts to throttle free speech in regard to the pandemic.

Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, a Stanford University professor of medicine, is one of the personal plaintiffs in the case as he was intentionally singled out for social media censorship by the government.  He was hoping for a different ruling in the Alliance case, but understands that the federal case involves very specific and direct regulatory oversight powers that could be used to seriously, significantly, and immediately damage social media companies.

Still, though, “why would the department have bothered to use Schiff’s office, to mention Schiff at all?” if not to at least imply a threat, said Bhattacharya.  

Note – as a former elected official myself I can vouch for the very simple fact that those whom you are involved in regulating will jump to satisfy the powers that be in almost any demand.  Name-dropping may be a fun game to impress friends at cocktail parties, but in political circles it is always done to imply a threat or ask a favor.  A small real world tip for the judge for the future.

Bhattacharya said the ruling is bad news not just for people concerned about the issue of trust in public health, but about all aspects of government because:

“LA County now has free rein to censor any American who criticizes it.” 

Hamill is already working on her appeal.

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6 thoughts on “LADPH Prevails in First Amendment Lawsuit: Judge Has No Idea How Politics Works

  1. This is an outrageous decision. As you know. I’m glad the judge was named, for what it’s worth. Also glad there is an appeals process. SHAME on this judge. These people are like mobsters. They get away with murder, literally and figuratively. All of them. In a civilized society we are supposed to be discouraging such mobster-like behavior, not enabling it. How silly of me to even think this is still the standard and that we live in a free society. Should know better by now.

    1. There is a saying, that goes something like, “we don’t know how evil Evil is.” And we also don’t know how corrupt Corruption really is.

  2. Donald Trump’s tenure as the 45th president of the United States began with his inauguration on January 20, 2017, and ended on January 20, 2021. Wikipedia – note “2017-2021”
    The Defense Production Act has played a role in the U.S. government’s response to COVID-19 (from about November 1st 2019 US virus release date ) pandemic.
    President Trump declared a national emergency in March 2020, making the pandemic eligible for government action under the Defense Production Act.
    President Trump said he invoked the Defense Production Act more than 100 times to facilitate Operation Warp Speed.
    Trump has made the vaccinated all part of a “US Army experiment” and when you re-elect him, he will finish the job on behalf of his masters, whoever they are, but let us presuppose they are those I have identified in the final paragraph and others.
    Trump’s campaign speech in Las Vegas in which the presumptive GOP presidential nominee rambled about sharks and electrocution, claimed insurrectionists who stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, are “warriors” and more – not this “old man” for President of anything, or Biden either.
    RFK Junior is young with a young man’s flair for the future and maybe, just maybe, able to stop this ongoing deliberate genocide.
    The vaccinated are countermeasure prototypes, for the US Army, to see the objective of a Covid-19 (vaccines) countermeasure, in the impairment of the operational effectiveness of enemy activity” by spike protein,the most antigenic and toxic part of a coronavirus” (vaccine) based on the measurable effects of their (the vaccines) deployment”, by the US military’s own definitions of terms used in Operation Warp Speed contracts, the (vaccine) products it commissioned “amount to bioweapons” and the vaccinated are part of the US Army experiment to see the effectiveness of their Covid-19 vaccines weapon, as explained below:
    The injection of these “countermeasure prototype vaccines” which satisfy the US military definition of a biological agent into people has killed some recipients and permanently disabled increasingly large numbers of others, “resulting in their (vaccines) operational effectiveness based on the measurable effects of their (vaccines) deployment”, by the US military’s own definitions of (vaccines) terms used in Operation Warp Speed contracts, the (vaccines) products it commissioned “amount to bioweapons”.
    The US military defines a biological agent as a micro-organism (or toxin derived from it) that causes disease.
    Vaccines are regulated by the US Food and Drug Administration as biological products, therefore they can be described as biological agents.
    The mRNA (ModRNA) products instruct recipients cells to make a form of its spike protein, the most antigenic and, some researchers argue, toxic part of a coronavirus.
    Since December 2020, 5.5 billion people, 72 per cent of the global population, have been injected with Covid-19 vaccines commissioned under Operation Warp Speed by the US Army “as countermeasure prototypes”, by 2024 at least 8 billion people out of 8.5 billion people have been vaccinated with these bioweapons.
    By the US military’s own definition, The US Army Covid-19 vaccines bioweapon provides “the objective of a countermeasure which is the impairment of the operational effectiveness of enemy activity” by spike protein,the most antigenic and toxic part of a coronavirus,as a weapon,is proven,but for the vaccinated, they are the vaccine experiment then.
    Trump followed on by Biden. Excuse me for saying so, but after the world populations have been decimated down to 250 million, more or less by 2025/26, by this US Army bioweapon, who will be left to use it on?
    Refer back to the beginning of my above article and read it again, if you missed something, from my “Update 2”.
    I can’t help wondering if the Elite, comprising Putin, Trump, Biden, Xi and other world leaders and the unseen billionaires, the WHO, WEF, etc, are in this together, but playing their parts to make we, the “Human Rubbish” of their societies, think there are warlike political divisions between us, when those divisions are for “your” show, just to fool you, while your extermination continues unregulated.
    It is what I’ve been saying in my substack these past 4 years, I just never had the facts to prove my theories, now I do.
    Whoever you are, wherever you work, vaccinate the Elite in your sphere of influence and make your vaccinated problems theirs too but leave their Human Rubbish, who we are, alone.
    The full version is in my post before this one on my free substack – read it through and confirm if my assumptions are correct, to your satisfaction:
    Substack Then:christine.257 Then: Read First (it’s free)
    https://www.keionline.org/misc-docs/DOD-ATI-Pfizer-Technical-Direction-Letter-OTA-W15QKN-16-9-1002-21July2020.pdf
    If nothing happens and the population numbers remain the same – there is hope yet, but if the numbers of deaths and injuries continue to occur without reason, then the damage has been done, can’t be changed and the above is true – but I really, really hope not (shudder)
    The Great Reset will occur and nothing can stop it now.

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