May 14, 2022
Last year, the White River Junction-based publisher Chelsea Green published a book called “The Truth about COVID-19: Exposing the Great Reset, Lockdowns, Vaccine Passports and the New Normal.” The book advanced the conspiracy theory that the pandemic was “pre-planned” by a cabal of global elites to “facilitate and hide the transfer of wealth to unelected technocrats who control the pandemic narrative, while simultaneously justifying the erosion of your personal freedoms and civil liberties.” It goes on to suggest that COVID-19 vaccines are more lethal than the virus itself, and that severe cases of COVID can be successfully treated with Vitamins A and C.
In September, Sen. Elizabeth Warren called on Amazon executives to modify the site’s algorithms to limit the visibility of books that she said advance false or misleading claims about the pandemic, including the Chelsea Green title.
In turn, Chelsea Green, the book’s authors and anti-vaccine nutjob activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (who wrote the book’s foreword), sued Warren in federal court, claiming that her letter to Amazon constituted an attempt at censorship and a violation of the First Amendment. The following month, they sought a preliminary injunction ordering Warren to retract the letter.
This past Monday, U.S. District Judge Barbara Rothstein declined to issue the injunction.
She didn’t say so in her decision, but this is the sort of thing we refer to in the law as a “no-brainer.”
By the way, you know how I always harp on the importance of Presidential elections as they relate to federal judicial appointments, since they last a lifetime? Humor me here: Can you guess which President appointed Judge Rothstein to the bench?
If you guessed “Jimmy Carter,” give yourself a pat on the back. Judge Rothstein has been on the bench for 42 years.