Tag: lawsuits

Lawsuit On Behalf Of Vaccine-injured Seeks To Strike Down ‘Unconstitutional’ PREP Act

A lawsuit filed Tuesday seeks to strike down the PREP Act — the federal law that granted legal immunity to companies such as Pfizer and Moderna for injuries caused by their COVID-19 vaccines and other COVID-19 countermeasures.

The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida, Tampa Division, alleges the Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness (PREP) Act violates the U.S. Constitution and the Administrative Procedure Act, which governs how federal agencies develop and issue regulations.

Plaintiffs in the suit include the nonprofit Moms for America and individual plaintiffs who were injured by a COVID-19 vaccine, or whose loved one suffered injury or death from a COVID-19 vaccine.

According to the complaint, “This case is about the government’s failure to resolve conflicts involving Americans killed or grievously harmed while receiving healthcare during the COVID-19 pandemic.”

Defendants are the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), the U.S. Health Resources and Services Administration, HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra and President Joe Biden.

“As even The New York Times has recently acknowledged,” Jeff Childers, attorney for the plaintiffs, told The Defender, “too many Americans have been injured by the COVID vaccines and other rushed treatments, and now have no recourse, no help and no support. They can’t sue anybody, thanks to PREP.”

“PREP was poorly conceived, badly executed, and gave far too much power to unelected bureaucrats and executive agencies,” he added.

Childers wrote on Substack today that the PREP Act should “be crushed and burned to a cinder in the incinerator of history’s worst ideas.”

The lawsuit asks the court to declare the PREP Act unconstitutional and to declare that the HHS secretary’s actions in implementing the act violate the Administrative Procedure Act.

The suit also asks the court to declare that the plaintiffs can sue companies like Pfizer and Moderna in federal and state courts. It also seeks compensation for attorney fees.

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Supreme Court Turns Away COVID-19 Vaccine Appeals

U.S. Supreme Court justices on June 24 rejected appeals brought over COVID-19 vaccines by Children’s Health Defense (CHD), a nonprofit founded by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., an independent candidate running for president.

The nation’s top court rejected an appeal seeking to overturn lower court rulings that found that CHD and its members lacked standing to sue the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) over its emergency authorizations of COVID-19 vaccines for minors.

The justices also rebuffed another CHD appeal in a case that challenged the COVID-19 vaccine mandate imposed on students at Rutgers University, a public college in New Jersey.

The Supreme Court did not comment on either denial. It included them in a lengthy list dealing with dozens of cases.

“Disappointing that the courts are closed to FDA fraud harming millions of Americans,” Robert Barnes, an attorney representing CHD in the FDA case, told The Epoch Times in an email.

He called for Congress to pass reforms.

Julio Gomez, an attorney representing CHD in the Rutgers case, told The Epoch Times in an email that the Supreme Court’s denials marked a sad day because clarity is needed on vaccines and the Supreme Court’s 1905 decision in Jacobson v. Massachusetts, which upheld a city’s law requiring vaccination against smallpox.

Mr. Gomez pointed to a recent federal appeals court ruling that determined that Jacobson did not apply to a case filed against a vaccine mandate in California because plaintiffs had produced evidence that the COVID-19 vaccines do not prevent the spread of COVID-19.

Lawyers for Rutgers and the government did not return requests for comment.

In the FDA case, CHD and parents in Texas and Florida argued that the regulatory agency cleared COVID-19 vaccines under emergency authorization despite COVID-19 posing less risk than influenza to children and without adequate clinical testing. The FDA also wrongly promoted the vaccines, the plaintiffs alleged.

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Bankruptcy Trustee to Shut Down Infowars, Liquidate Its Assets to Pay Sandy Hook Families

A bankruptcy trustee on Sunday filed an emergency motion to shut down Infowars and Alex Jones’ parent company Free Speech Systems and liquidate its assets to pay the Sandy Hook families.

Earlier this month a federal judge ordered the liquidation of Alex Jones’ personal assets.

Judge Christopher Lopez approved Alex Jones’ request to convert a Chapter 11 business reorganization bankruptcy to a Chapter 7 personal bankruptcy.

However, a couple of weeks ago the judge dismissed the bankruptcy reorganization of Infowars and its parent company Free Speech Systems.

Legal experts said the Sandy Hook families could go back to the bankruptcy court and demand Alex Jones liquidate his company to pay off the Sandy Hook debt.

On Sunday the bankruptcy trustee said he intends to conduct an “orderly wind down” of Alex Jones’ media company.

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Nonpartisan Election Validity Group Files Landmark Lawsuit in Pennsylvania

United Sovereign Americans, Inc., a nonpartisan, all-volunteer election validity advocate group, and two Pennsylvania residents, have filed a Writ of Mandamus, directed to the following Pennsylvania officials and organizations – Secretary of the Commonwealth, the Bureau of Elections, the Bureau of Election Security and Technology, the Department of State, and the state Attorney General.

They have also named Attorney General Merrick Garland and the United States Department of Justice as additional “Respondents.”

They are claiming that the officials named above are not performing their duty to follow existing laws that safeguard our elections.

“A writ of mandamus is a judicial remedy in the English and American common law system consisting of a court order that commands a government official or entity to perform an act it is legally required to perform as part of its official duties, or to refrain from performing an act the law forbids it from doing. Writs of mandamus are usually used in situations where a government official has failed to act as legally required or has taken a legally prohibited action.”

The Petitioners assert, “The Congress of the United States has outlined the minimum standards which must be maintained by every state in order for a federal election to be considered reliable. As outlined below, in Pennsylvania’s 2022 federal election those minimum standards were not met by commonwealth election officials rendering the certified election results that year unreliable. Respondents in their official capacities engaged in insufficient efforts to ensure that the 2022 performance is not repeated in subsequent federal elections beginning in 2024.”

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Trans-identified male awarded $35,000 by Ontario court after women’s salon refused to wax ‘her’ balls

A Canadian court awarded a trans-indetified male, who claims to be a woman, $35,000 after an Ontario women’s salon refused to wax “her” male genitalia. The salon employee working that day was a devout Muslim woman who refrained from physical contact with men, and the salon owner told the trans woman that they could not find a way to accommodate her request.

Jason Carruthers, owner of Mad Wax in Windsor, told Rebel News that he has 30 days to pay the hefty sum following a six-year battle in court. He has filed for an appeal and launched a fundraiser.

The complainant, identified as AB, filed a complaint with the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario in 2018 after speaking to Carruthers on the phone, in which the individual said the waxing services was denied. The court found Carruthers liable for discrimination and “misgendering” the complainant.

The business owner said the complainant AB changed the story, claiming after the fact that only a leg waxing was requested. Carruthers explained that his salon has always waxed transgender clients’ legs, but the caller did not ask for a leg wax.

Carruthers told AB that he did not have any employees available who could provide a “male waxing” service at that time, referring to AB’s biological male genitalia and not the complainant’s gender identity. Hence the point of the complaint.

After AB filed a human rights complaint, Carruthers told reporters that AB had requested “male Brazilian waxing,” a comment that the human rights court used against him.

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Internet Archive forced to remove 500,000 books after publishers’ court win

As a result of book publishers successfully suing the Internet Archive (IA) last year, the free online library that strives to keep growing online access to books recently shrank by about 500,000 titles.

IA reported in a blog post this month that publishers abruptly forcing these takedowns triggered a “devastating loss” for readers who depend on IA to access books that are otherwise impossible or difficult to access.

To restore access, IA is now appealing, hoping to reverse the prior court’s decision by convincing the US Court of Appeals in the Second Circuit that IA’s controlled digital lending of its physical books should be considered fair use under copyright law. An April court filing shows that IA intends to argue that the publishers have no evidence that the e-book market has been harmed by the open library’s lending, and copyright law is better served by allowing IA’s lending than by preventing it.

“We use industry-standard technology to prevent our books from being downloaded and redistributed—the same technology used by corporate publishers,” Chris Freeland, IA’s director of library services, wrote in the blog. “But the publishers suing our library say we shouldn’t be allowed to lend the books we own. They have forced us to remove more than half a million books from our library, and that’s why we are appealing.”

IA will have an opportunity to defend its practices when oral arguments start in its appeal on June 28.

“Our position is straightforward; we just want to let our library patrons borrow and read the books we own, like any other library,” Freeland wrote, while arguing that the “potential repercussions of this lawsuit extend far beyond the Internet Archive” and publishers should just “let readers read.”

“This is a fight for the preservation of all libraries and the fundamental right to access information, a cornerstone of any democratic society,” Freeland wrote. “We believe in the right of authors to benefit from their work; and we believe that libraries must be permitted to fulfill their mission of providing access to knowledge, regardless of whether it takes physical or digital form. Doing so upholds the principle that knowledge should be equally and equitably accessible to everyone, regardless of where they live or where they learn.”

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Church of Scientology ignored woman’s ‘very real psychosis,’ stopped her from receiving mental health care before suicide, lawsuit claims

The mother of a Florida woman who died by suicide has slapped the Church of Scientology with a wrongful death lawsuit, alleging the church “brainwashed” her daughter who struggled with her mental health, into thinking traditional therapy or medical treatments were “unnecessary and abhorrent.”

Whitney Mills, 40, of Clearwater, died by suicide in May 2022, according to the civil lawsuit filed in the Circuit Court of the Sixth Judicial Circuit in Pinellas County.

Leila Mills alleges the church knew quite well that her daughter — who was among the highest ranks in the church after shelling out “hundreds of thousands of dollars to attain her status,” the lawsuit claims — was struggling to cope.

But “upon learning of her problems, the Scientology defendants took control of Mills’ medical care, thus foreclosing her from obtaining the exact treatment she needed,” her family claims.

Instead, she was “misinformed and misdiagnosed with Lyme disease and a cancerous ovarian cyst” while the church, and specifically one doctor was “largely ignoring her very real psychosis and mental health crisis.”

Whitney Mills was “extorted” by the church, her mother says, and everything the church “foisted” on her daughter was “outside the field of mental health treatment, and everything failed,” the family’s attorney Ramon Rasco wrote.

Stopped from seeking any real help, Whitney Mills “felt she had no other choice,” but to kill herself.

“Not only did they not properly care for her, contrary to the duty they undertook, they actually suggested she ‘drop the body,’” the lawsuit emphasizes repeatedly, using a phrase coined by Church of Scientology leaders including founder L. Ron Hubbard.

The phrase means suicide or death or to leave one’s corporal body, according to the lawsuit.

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A Florida Man Was Arrested for Filming Marion County Sheriff’s Deputies. Now He’s Suing.

A Florida man has filed a federal civil rights lawsuit three years after a Marion County sheriff’s deputy arrested him for filming officers from a public sidewalk.

In 2021, Marion County Sheriff’s Deputy Neil Rosaci arrested George Nathansen and charged him with obstruction of justice for refusing to follow his orders to leave the scene of an investigation. However, body camera footage showed Nathansen standing at least 30 feet away on a public sidewalk before Rosaci walked over and handcuffed him.

In Nathansen’s lawsuit, filed last Friday in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida, he alleges that Rosaci and the Marion County Sheriff’s Office (MCSO) violated his Fourth Amendment and Fourteenth Amendment rights by falsely arresting and incarcerating him.

Numerous federal appeals courts have ruled that filming the police is protected under the First Amendment, but police around the country continue to illegally arrest people for it. The Justice Department released a report this month on pervasive civil rights violations by the Phoenix Police Department, including retaliating against citizens who were trying to record them. Earlier this year, Texas prosecutors dropped charges against a citizen journalist who was arrested, strip-searched, and jailed for filming police.

Nathansen’s case is yet another example of police retaliation against someone for core First Amendment activities.

The incident began on July 24, 2021, when Rosaci arrived at the scene of a car crash. While deputies were talking to the two parties involved in the accident, Nathansen arrived and began filming with his cell phone. There are a growing number of self-styled “First Amendment auditors” around the country who record police interactions and post them online. (In response to alleged harassment, several states have passed dubious “buffer-zone” laws that criminalize being too close to a first responder.) 

Rosaci’s body camera footage, obtained by the Ocala Post, showed that Nathansen was filming near the deputies’ cars when Rosaci first shooed him away and told him, “You can stand on the sidewalk over there.”

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Indiana and Mississippi Are Sued Over Online Age Verification Digital ID Laws

A group associated with big (and smaller) tech companies has filed a lawsuit claiming First Amendment violations against the state of Mississippi.

This comes after long years of these companies scoffing at First Amendment speech protections, as they censored their users’ speech and/or deplatformed them.

We obtained a copy of the lawsuit for you here.

It might seem hypocritical, but at the same time, even a broken clock is right twice a day. In this case, it is the industry group NetChoice that has launched the legal battle (NetChoice v. Fitch), at the center of which is state bill HB 1126 which requires age verification to be implemented on social networks.

NetChoice correctly observes that forcing people (for the sake of providing parental consent) to essentially unmask themselves through age verification (“age assurance”) exposes sensitive personal data, undermines their constitutional rights, and poses a threat to the online security of all internet users.

The filing against Mississippi also asserts that it is up to parents – rather than what NetChoice calls “Big Government” – to, in different ways, assure that their children are using sites and online services in an age-appropriate manner.

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“A First Victory Against Big Tech!” – Belgian Lawmaker Awarded €27k From Meta For Unfair Facebook ‘Shadowban’

Meta, the parent company of Facebook, has been ordered to pay damages in the sum of €27,000 to a Belgian right-wing lawmaker for unfairly limiting his reach on the social media platform, otherwise known as “shadowbanning.”

The Antwerp Court of Appeal ruled on Monday in favor of Tom Vandendriessche, an MEP standing for reelection as the lead candidate for the Flemish separatist party, Vlaams Belang, in Belgium.

The court held that Facebook had unfairly censored Vandendriessche’s account, which currently boasts 234,000 followers, back in February 2021 and had failed to act “in accordance with the principle of good faith” and did not offer “sufficient procedural guarantees” for users who were subjected to such measures. His account was subsequently blocked in May of the same year.

Meta claimed it had acted in accordance with its community guidelines and accused the Belgian lawmaker of posting inappropriate content on the platform, leading to the shadowban. However, Vandendriessche was informed by the social media giant the ban had been lifted at the end of 2021, a claim he contested, as his organic reach remained artificially low.

No ruling was made on this claim, as the court held there was insufficient evidence to prove the account remained subject to adverse measures.

The judgment overruled the court of first instance, which ruled that Belgian courts did not have jurisdiction to decide on the matter, leading to an appeal to the higher court by Vandendriessche.

In a statement following the ruling, the Vlaams Belang politician hailed “a first victory against Big Tech,” insisting that “anonymous technocrats should never dictate what can be said and heard.”

“I hope that this ruling makes it clear to Facebook that they can no longer censor me, and many citizens with me, without consequences,” he added.

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