9th Circuit - some book "bans" are OK
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Strictly speaking, the court didn't rule that it's OK to ban some books. What they ruled is that Sen. Warren's "jawboning" didn't rise to the level of coercion of Amazon.
"Nice bookstore you have there..."
In September 2021, Warren penned a letter to Amazon’s CEO blasting the company for allowing books to be sold, and also discovered on its platform that it spread what she believes to be “COVID misinformation.” She highlighted a specific book, “The Truth About COVID-19: Exposing the Great Reset, Lockdowns, Vaccine Passports, and the New Normal,” by Joseph Mercola and Ronnie Cummins as the subject of her ire. The book contains a foreword by Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
“As cases of COVID-19 continue to rise, Amazon is feeding misinformation loops through its search and ‘Best Seller’ algorithms, potentially leading countless Americans to risk their health and the health of their neighbors based on misleading and inaccurate information that they discover on Amazon’s website,” Warren wrote.
The senator then “asked” Amazon to explain itself and “asked” for “within 14 days… [it provide] a plan to modify these algorithms” so they no longer are “directing consumers to books and other products containing COVID19 misinformation.” Warren’s letter even threatened Amazon with legal consequences, suggesting that its practices constituted “an unethical, unacceptable, and potentially unlawful course of action from one of the nation’s largest retailers.”
Kennedy sued Warren over this, alleging that her pressure campaign against Amazon constituted “jawboning,” which is an established legal standard that refers to government coercion of private speech suppression, and that has been deemed unconstitutional. However, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals just ruled that Warren does not need to retract the letter and that, due to a variety of factors, her actions do not constitute “coercion” but are rather an attempt at “persuasion.”
I'll be interesting to see if this goes any higher.
